The Doctor's view was naturally different.  That gentleman never wearied
of the sound of his own voice, which was, to say the truth, agreeable
enough to hear.  He now had a listener, who was not so cynically
indifferent as Anastasie, and who sometimes put him on his mettle by the
most relevant objections.  Besides, was he not educating the boy?  And
education, philosophers are agreed, is the most philosophical of duties.
What can be more heavenly to poor mankind than to have one's hobby grow
into a duty to the State?  Then, indeed, do the ways of life become ways
of pleasantness.  Never had the Doctor seen reason to be more content
with his endowments.  Philosophy flowed smoothly from his lips.  He was
so agile a dialectician that he could trace his nonsense, when
challenged, back to some root in sense, and prove it to be a sort of
flower upon his system.  He slipped out of antinomies like a fish, and
left his disciple marvelling at the rabbi's depth.

Moreover, deep down in his heart the Doctor was disappointed with the ill-
success of his more formal education.  A boy, chosen by so acute an
observer for his aptitude, and guided along the path of learning by so
philosophic an instructor, was bound, by the nature of the universe, to
make a more obvious and lasting advance.  Now Jean-Marie was slow in all
things, impenetrable in others; and his power of forgetting was fully on
a level with his power to learn.  Therefore the Doctor cherished his
peripatetic lectures, to which the boy attended, which he generally
appeared to enjoy, and by which he often profited.

Many and many were the talks they had together; and health and moderation
proved the subject of the Doctor's divagations.  To these he lovingly
returned.

'I lead you,' he would say, 'by the green pastures.  My system, my
beliefs, my medicines, are resumed in one phrase--to avoid excess.
Blessed nature, healthy, temperate nature, abhors and exterminates
excess.  Human law, in this matter, imitates at a great distance her
provisions; and we must strive to supplement the efforts of the law.  Yes,
boy, we must be a law to ourselves and for ourselves and for our
neighbours--lex armata--armed, emphatic, tyrannous law.  If you see a
crapulous human ruin snuffing, dash from him his box!  The judge, though
in a way an admission of disease, is less offensive to me than either the
doctor or the priest.  Above all the doctor--the doctor and the purulent
trash and garbage of his pharmacopoeia!  Pure air--from the neighbourhood
of a pinetum for the sake of the turpentine--unadulterated wine, and the
reflections of an unsophisticated spirit in the presence of the works of
nature--these, my boy, are the best medical appliances and the best
religious comforts.  Devote yourself to these.  Hark! there are the bells
of Bourron (the wind is in the north, it will be fair).  How clear and
airy is the sound!  The nerves are harmonised and quieted; the mind
attuned to silence; and observe how easily and regularly beats the heart!
Your unenlightened doctor would see nothing in these sensations; and yet
you yourself perceive they are a part of health.--Did you remember your
cinchona this morning?  Good.  Cinchona also is a work of nature; it is,
after all, only the bark of a tree which we might gather for ourselves if
we lived in the locality.--What a world is this!  Though a professed
atheist, I delight to bear my testimony to the world.  Look at the
gratuitous remedies and pleasures that surround our path!  The river runs
by the garden end, our bath, our fishpond, our natural system of
drainage.  There is a well in the court which sends up sparkling water
from the earth's very heart, clean, cool, and, with a little wine, most
wholesome.  The district is notorious for its salubrity; rheumatism is
the only prevalent complaint, and I myself have never had a touch of it.
I tell you--and my opinion is based upon the coldest, clearest processes
of reason--if I, if you, desired to leave this home of pleasures, it
would be the duty, it would be the privilege, of our best friend to
prevent us with a pistol bullet.'

One beautiful June day they sat upon the hill outside the village.  The
river, as blue as heaven, shone here and there among the foliage.  The
indefatigable birds turned and flickered about Gretz church tower.  A
healthy wind blew from over the forest, and the sound of innumerable
thousands of tree-tops and innumerable millions on millions of green
leaves was abroad in the air, and filled the ear with something between
whispered speech and singing.  It seemed as if every blade of grass must
hide a cigale; and the fields rang merrily with their music, jingling far
and near as with the sleigh-bells of the fairy queen.  From their station
on the slope the eye embraced a large space of poplar'd plain upon the
one hand, the waving hill-tops of the forest on the other, and Gretz
itself in the middle, a handful of roofs.  Under the bestriding arch of
the blue heavens, the place seemed dwindled to a toy.  It seemed
incredible that people dwelt, and could find room to turn or air to
breathe, in such a corner of the world.  The thought came home to the
boy, perhaps for the first time, and he gave it words.

'How small it looks!' he sighed.

'Ay,' replied the Doctor, 'small enough now.  Yet it was once a walled
city; thriving, full of furred burgesses and men in armour, humming with
affairs;--with tall spires, for aught that I know, and portly towers
along the battlements.  A thousand chimneys ceased smoking at the curfew
bell.  There were gibbets at the gate as thick as scarecrows.  In time of
war, the assault swarmed against it with ladders, the arrows fell like
leaves, the defenders sallied hotly over the drawbridge, each side
uttered its cry as they plied their weapons.  Do you know that the walls
extended as far as the Commanderie?  Tradition so reports.  Alas, what a
long way off is all this confusion--nothing left of it but my quiet words
spoken in your ear--and the town itself shrunk to the hamlet underneath
us!  By-and-by came the English wars--you shall hear more of the English,
a stupid people, who sometimes blundered into good--and Gretz was taken,
sacked, and burned.  It is the history of many towns; but Gretz never
rose again; it was never rebuilt; its ruins were a quarry to serve the
growth of rivals; and the stones of Gretz are now erect along the streets
of Nemours.  It gratifies me that our old house was the first to rise
after the calamity; when the town had come to an end, it inaugurated the
hamlet.'

'I, too, am glad of that,' said Jean-Marie.

'It should be the temple of the humbler virtues,' responded the Doctor
with a savoury gusto.  'Perhaps one of the reasons why I love my little
hamlet as I do, is that we have a similar history, she and I.  Have I
told you that I was once rich?'

'I do not think so,' answered Jean-Marie.  'I do not think I should have
forgotten.  I am sorry you should have lost your fortune.'

'Sorry?' cried the Doctor.  'Why, I find I have scarce begun your
education after all.  Listen to me!  Would you rather live in the old
Gretz or in the new, free from the alarms of war, with the green country
at the door, without noise, passports, the exactions of the soldiery, or
the jangle of the curfew-bell to send us off to bed by sundown?'

'I suppose I should prefer the new,' replied the boy.

'Precisely,' returned the Doctor; 'so do I.  And, in the same way, I
prefer my present moderate fortune to my former wealth.  Golden
mediocrity! cried the adorable ancients; and I subscribe to their
enthusiasm.  Have I not good wine, good food, good air, the fields and
the forest for my walk, a house, an admirable wife, a boy whom I protest
I cherish like a son?  Now, if I were still rich, I should indubitably
make my residence in Paris--you know Paris--Paris and Paradise are not
convertible terms.  This pleasant noise of the wind streaming among
leaves changed into the grinding Babel of the street, the stupid glare of
plaster substituted for this quiet pattern of greens and greys, the
nerves shattered, the digestion falsified--picture the fall!  Already you
perceive the consequences; the mind is stimulated, the heart steps to a
different measure, and the man is himself no longer.  I have passionately
studied myself--the true business of philosophy.  I know my character as
the musician knows the ventages of his flute.  Should I return to Paris,
I should ruin myself gambling; nay, I go further--I should break the
heart of my Anastasie with infidelities.'

This was too much for Jean-Marie.  That a place should so transform the
most excellent of men transcended his belief.  Paris, he protested, was
even an agreeable place of residence.  'Nor when I lived in that city did
I feel much difference,' he pleaded.

'What!' cried the Doctor.  'Did you not steal when you were there?'

But the boy could never be brought to see that he had done anything wrong
when he stole.  Nor, indeed, did the Doctor think he had; but that
gentleman was never very scrupulous when in want of a retort.

'And now,' he concluded, 'do you begin to understand?  My only friends
were those who ruined me.  Gretz has been my academy, my sanatorium, my
heaven of innocent pleasures.  If millions are offered me, I wave them
back: _Retro_, _Sathanas_!--Evil one, begone!  Fix your mind on my
example; despise riches, avoid the debasing influence of cities.
Hygiene--hygiene and mediocrity of fortune--these be your watchwords
during life!'

The Doctor's system of hygiene strikingly coincided with his tastes; and
his picture of the perfect life was a faithful description of the one he
was leading at the time.  But it is easy to convince a boy, whom you
supply with all the facts for the discussion.  And besides, there was one
thing admirable in the philosophy, and that was the enthusiasm of the
philosopher.  There was never any one more vigorously determined to be
pleased; and if he was not a great logician, and so had no right to
convince the intellect, he was certainly something of a poet, and had a
fascination to seduce the heart.  What he could not achieve in his
customary humour of a radiant admiration of himself and his
circumstances, he sometimes effected in his fits of gloom.

'Boy,' he would say, 'avoid me to-day.  If I were superstitious, I should
even beg for an interest in your prayers.  I am in the black fit; the
evil spirit of King Saul, the hag of the merchant Abudah, the personal
devil of the mediaeval monk, is with me--is in me,' tapping on his
breast.  'The vices of my nature are now uppermost; innocent pleasures
woo me in vain; I long for Paris, for my wallowing in the mire.  See,' he
would continue, producing a handful of silver, 'I denude myself, I am not
to be trusted with the price of a fare.  Take it, keep it for me,
squander it on deleterious candy, throw it in the deepest of the river--I
will homologate your action.  Save me from that part of myself which I
disown.  If you see me falter, do not hesitate; if necessary, wreck the
train!  I speak, of course, by a parable.  Any extremity were better than
for me to reach Paris alive.'

Doubtless the Doctor enjoyed these little scenes, as a variation in his
part; they represented the Byronic element in the somewhat artificial
poetry of his existence; but to the boy, though he was dimly aware of
their theatricality, they represented more.  The Doctor made perhaps too
little, the boy possibly too much, of the reality and gravity of these
temptations.

One day a great light shone for Jean-Marie.  'Could not riches be used
well?' he asked.

'In theory, yes,' replied the Doctor.  'But it is found in experience
that no one does so.  All the world imagine they will be exceptional when
they grow wealthy; but possession is debasing, new desires spring up; and
the silly taste for ostentation eats out the heart of pleasure.'

'Then you might be better if you had less,' said the boy.

'Certainly not,' replied the Doctor; but his voice quavered as he spoke.

'Why?' demanded pitiless innocence.

Doctor Desprez saw all the colours of the rainbow in a moment; the stable
universe appeared to be about capsizing with him.  'Because,' said
he--affecting deliberation after an obvious pause--'because I have formed
my life for my present income.  It is not good for men of my years to be
violently dissevered from their habits.'

That was a sharp brush.  The Doctor breathed hard, and fell into
taciturnity for the afternoon.  As for the boy, he was delighted with the
resolution of his doubts; even wondered that he had not foreseen the
obvious and conclusive answer.  His faith in the Doctor was a stout piece
of goods.  Desprez was inclined to be a sheet in the wind's eye after
dinner, especially after Rhone wine, his favourite weakness.  He would
then remark on the warmth of his feeling for Anastasie, and with inflamed
cheeks and a loose, flustered smile, debate upon all sorts of topics, and
be feebly and indiscreetly witty.  But the adopted stable-boy would not
permit himself to entertain a doubt that savoured of ingratitude.  It is
quite true that a man may be a second father to you, and yet take too
much to drink; but the best natures are ever slow to accept such truths.

The Doctor thoroughly possessed his heart, but perhaps he exaggerated his
influence over his mind.  Certainly Jean-Marie adopted some of his
master's opinions, but I have yet to learn that he ever surrendered one
of his own.  Convictions existed in him by divine right; they were
virgin, unwrought, the brute metal of decision.  He could add others
indeed, but he could not put away; neither did he care if they were
perfectly agreed among themselves; and his spiritual pleasures had
nothing to do with turning them over or justifying them in words.  Words
were with him a mere accomplishment, like dancing.  When he was by
himself, his pleasures were almost vegetable.  He would slip into the
woods towards Acheres, and sit in the mouth of a cave among grey birches.
His soul stared straight out of his eyes; he did not move or think;
sunlight, thin shadows moving in the wind, the edge of firs against the
sky, occupied and bound his faculties.  He was pure unity, a spirit
wholly abstracted.  A single mood filled him, to which all the objects of
sense contributed, as the colours of the spectrum merge and disappear in
white light.

So while the Doctor made himself drunk with words, the adopted stable-boy
bemused himself with silence.



CHAPTER V.  TREASURE TROVE.


The Doctor's carriage was a two-wheeled gig with a hood; a kind of
vehicle in much favour among country doctors.  On how many roads has one
not seen it, a great way off between the poplars!--in how many village
streets, tied to a gate-post!  This sort of chariot is
affected--particularly at the trot--by a kind of pitching movement to and
fro across the axle, which well entitles it to the style of a Noddy.  The
hood describes a considerable arc against the landscape, with a solemnly
absurd effect on the contemplative pedestrian.  To ride in such a
carriage cannot be numbered among the things that appertain to glory; but
I have no doubt it may be useful in liver complaint.  Thence, perhaps,
its wide popularity among physicians.

One morning early, Jean-Marie led forth the Doctor's noddy, opened the
gate, and mounted to the driving-seat.  The Doctor followed, arrayed from
top to toe in spotless linen, armed with an immense flesh-coloured
umbrella, and girt with a botanical case on a baldric; and the equipage
drove off smartly in a breeze of its own provocation.  They were bound
for Franchard, to collect plants, with an eye to the 'Comparative
Pharmacopoeia.'

A little rattling on the open roads, and they came to the borders of the
forest and struck into an unfrequented track; the noddy yawed softly over
the sand, with an accompaniment of snapping twigs.  There was a great,
green, softly murmuring cloud of congregated foliage overhead.  In the
arcades of the forest the air retained the freshness of the night.  The
athletic bearing of the trees, each carrying its leafy mountain, pleased
the mind like so many statues; and the lines of the trunk led the eye
admiringly upward to where the extreme leaves sparkled in a patch of
azure.  Squirrels leaped in mid air.  It was a proper spot for a devotee
of the goddess Hygieia.

'Have you been to Franchard, Jean-Marie?' inquired the Doctor.  'I fancy
not.'

'Never,' replied the boy.

'It is ruin in a gorge,' continued Desprez, adopting his expository
voice; 'the ruin of a hermitage and chapel.  History tells us much of
Franchard; how the recluse was often slain by robbers; how he lived on a
most insufficient diet; how he was expected to pass his days in prayer.  A
letter is preserved, addressed to one of these solitaries by the superior
of his order, full of admirable hygienic advice; bidding him go from his
book to praying, and so back again, for variety's sake, and when he was
weary of both to stroll about his garden and observe the honey bees.  It
is to this day my own system.  You must often have remarked me leaving
the "Pharmacopoeia"--often even in the middle of a phrase--to come forth
into the sun and air.  I admire the writer of that letter from my heart;
he was a man of thought on the most important subjects.  But, indeed, had
I lived in the Middle Ages (I am heartily glad that I did not) I should
have been an eremite myself--if I had not been a professed buffoon, that
is.  These were the only philosophical lives yet open: laughter or
prayer; sneers, we might say, and tears.  Until the sun of the Positive
arose, the wise man had to make his choice between these two.'

'I have been a buffoon, of course,' observed Jean-Marie.

'I cannot imagine you to have excelled in your profession,' said the
Doctor, admiring the boy's gravity.  'Do you ever laugh?'

'Oh, yes,' replied the other.  'I laugh often.  I am very fond of jokes.'

'Singular being!' said Desprez.  'But I divagate (I perceive in a
thousand ways that I grow old).  Franchard was at length destroyed in the
English wars, the same that levelled Gretz.  But--here is the point--the
hermits (for there were already more than one) had foreseen the danger
and carefully concealed the sacrificial vessels.  These vessels were of
monstrous value, Jean-Marie--monstrous value--priceless, we may say;
exquisitely worked, of exquisite material.  And now, mark me, they have
never been found.  In the reign of Louis Quatorze some fellows were
digging hard by the ruins.  Suddenly--tock!--the spade hit upon an
obstacle.  Imagine the men fooling one to another; imagine how their
hearts bounded, how their colour came and went.  It was a coffer, and in
Franchard the place of buried treasure!  They tore it open like famished
beasts.  Alas! it was not the treasure; only some priestly robes, which,
at the touch of the eating air, fell upon themselves and instantly wasted
into dust.  The perspiration of these good fellows turned cold upon them,
Jean-Marie.  I will pledge my reputation, if there was anything like a
cutting wind, one or other had a pneumonia for his trouble.'

'I should like to have seen them turning into dust,' said Jean-Marie.
'Otherwise, I should not have cared so greatly.'

'You have no imagination,' cried the Doctor.  'Picture to yourself the
scene.  Dwell on the idea--a great treasure lying in the earth for
centuries: the material for a giddy, copious, opulent existence not
employed; dresses and exquisite pictures unseen; the swiftest galloping
horses not stirring a hoof, arrested by a spell; women with the beautiful
faculty of smiles, not smiling; cards, dice, opera singing, orchestras,
castles, beautiful parks and gardens, big ships with a tower of
sailcloth, all lying unborn in a coffin--and the stupid trees growing
overhead in the sunlight, year after year.  The thought drives one
frantic.'

'It is only money,' replied Jean-Marie.  'It would do harm.'

'O, come!' cried Desprez, 'that is philosophy; it is all very fine, but
not to the point just now.  And besides, it is not "only money," as you
call it; there are works of art in the question; the vessels were carved.
You speak like a child.  You weary me exceedingly, quoting my words out
of all logical connection, like a parroquet.'

'And at any rate, we have nothing to do with it,' returned the boy
submissively.

They struck the Route Ronde at that moment; and the sudden change to the
rattling causeway combined, with the Doctor's irritation, to keep him
silent.  The noddy jigged along; the trees went by, looking on silently,
as if they had something on their minds.  The Quadrilateral was passed;
then came Franchard.  They put up the horse at the little solitary inn,
and went forth strolling.  The gorge was dyed deeply with heather; the
rocks and birches standing luminous in the sun.  A great humming of bees
about the flowers disposed Jean-Marie to sleep, and he sat down against a
clump of heather, while the Doctor went briskly to and fro, with quick
turns, culling his simples.

The boy's head had fallen a little forward, his eyes were closed, his
fingers had fallen lax about his knees, when a sudden cry called him to
his feet.  It was a strange sound, thin and brief; it fell dead, and
silence returned as though it had never been interrupted.  He had not
recognised the Doctor's voice; but, as there was no one else in all the
valley, it was plainly the Doctor who had given utterance to the sound.
He looked right and left, and there was Desprez, standing in a niche
between two boulders, and looking round on his adopted son with a
countenance as white as paper.

'A viper!' cried Jean-Marie, running towards him.  'A viper!  You are
bitten!'

The Doctor came down heavily out of the cleft, and, advanced in silence
to meet the boy, whom he took roughly by the shoulder.

'I have found it,' he said, with a gasp.

'A plant?' asked Jean-Marie.

Desprez had a fit of unnatural gaiety, which the rocks took up and
mimicked.  'A plant!' he repeated scornfully.  'Well--yes--a plant.  And
here,' he added suddenly, showing his right hand, which he had hitherto
concealed behind his back--'here is one of the bulbs.'

Jean-Marie saw a dirty platter, coated with earth.

'That?' said he.  'It is a plate!'

'It is a coach and horses,' cried the Doctor.  'Boy,' he continued,
growing warmer, 'I plucked away a great pad of moss from between these
boulders, and disclosed a crevice; and when I looked in, what do you
suppose I saw?  I saw a house in Paris with a court and garden, I saw my
wife shining with diamonds, I saw myself a deputy, I saw you--well, I--I
saw your future,' he concluded, rather feebly.  'I have just discovered
America,' he added.

'But what is it?' asked the boy.

'The Treasure of Franchard,' cried the Doctor; and, throwing his brown
straw hat upon the ground, he whooped like an Indian and sprang upon Jean-
Marie, whom he suffocated with embraces and bedewed with tears.  Then he
flung himself down among the heather and once more laughed until the
valley rang.

But the boy had now an interest of his own, a boy's interest.  No sooner
was he released from the Doctor's accolade than he ran to the boulders,
sprang into the niche, and, thrusting his hand into the crevice, drew
forth one after another, encrusted with the earth of ages, the flagons,
candlesticks, and patens of the hermitage of Franchard.  A casket came
last, tightly shut and very heavy.

'O what fun!' he cried.

But when he looked back at the Doctor, who had followed close behind and
was silently observing, the words died from his lips.  Desprez was once
more the colour of ashes; his lip worked and trembled; a sort of bestial
greed possessed him.

'This is childish,' he said.  'We lose precious time.  Back to the inn,
harness the trap, and bring it to yon bank.  Run for your life, and
remember--not one whisper.  I stay here to watch.'

Jean-Marie did as he was bid, though not without surprise.  The noddy was
brought round to the spot indicated; and the two gradually transported
the treasure from its place of concealment to the boot below the driving
seat.  Once it was all stored the Doctor recovered his gaiety.

'I pay my grateful duties to the genius of this dell,' he said.  'O, for
a live coal, a heifer, and a jar of country wine!  I am in the vein for
sacrifice, for a superb libation.  Well, and why not?  We are at
Franchard.  English pale ale is to be had--not classical, indeed, but
excellent.  Boy, we shall drink ale.'

'But I thought it was so unwholesome,' said Jean-Marie, 'and very dear
besides.'

'Fiddle-de-dee!' exclaimed the Doctor gaily.  'To the inn!'

And he stepped into the noddy, tossing his head, with an elastic,
youthful air.  The horse was turned, and in a few seconds they drew up
beside the palings of the inn garden.

'Here,' said Desprez--'here, near the table, so that we may keep an eye
upon things.'

They tied the horse, and entered the garden, the Doctor singing, now in
fantastic high notes, now producing deep reverberations from his chest.
He took a seat, rapped loudly on the table, assailed the waiter with
witticisms; and when the bottle of Bass was at length produced, far more
charged with gas than the most delirious champagne, he filled out a long
glassful of froth and pushed it over to Jean-Marie.  'Drink,' he said;
'drink deep.'

'I would rather not,' faltered the boy, true to his training.

'What?' thundered Desprez.

'I am afraid of it,' said Jean-Marie: 'my stomach--'

'Take it or leave it,' interrupted Desprez fiercely; 'but understand it
once for all--there is nothing so contemptible as a precisian.'

Here was a new lesson!  The boy sat bemused, looking at the glass but not
tasting it, while the Doctor emptied and refilled his own, at first with
clouded brow, but gradually yielding to the sun, the heady, prickling
beverage, and his own predisposition to be happy.

'Once in a way,' he said at last, by way of a concession to the boy's
more rigorous attitude, 'once in a way, and at so critical a moment, this
ale is a nectar for the gods.  The habit, indeed, is debasing; wine, the
juice of the grape, is the true drink of the Frenchman, as I have often
had occasion to point out; and I do not know that I can blame you for
refusing this outlandish stimulant.  You can have some wine and cakes.  Is
the bottle empty?  Well, we will not be proud; we will have pity on your
glass.'

The beer being done, the Doctor chafed bitterly while Jean-Marie finished
his cakes.  'I burn to be gone,' he said, looking at his watch.  'Good
God, how slow you eat!'  And yet to eat slowly was his own particular
prescription, the main secret of longevity!

His martyrdom, however, reached an end at last; the pair resumed their
places in the buggy, and Desprez, leaning luxuriously back, announced his
intention of proceeding to Fontainebleau.

'To Fontainebleau?' repeated Jean-Marie.

'My words are always measured,' said the Doctor.  'On!'

The Doctor was driven through the glades of paradise; the air, the light,
the shining leaves, the very movements of the vehicle, seemed to fall in
tune with his golden meditations; with his head thrown back, he dreamed a
series of sunny visions, ale and pleasure dancing in his veins.  At last
he spoke.

'I shall telegraph for Casimir,' he said.  'Good Casimir! a fellow of the
lower order of intelligence, Jean-Marie, distinctly not creative, not
poetic; and yet he will repay your study; his fortune is vast, and is
entirely due to his own exertions.  He is the very fellow to help us to
dispose of our trinkets, find us a suitable house in Paris, and manage
the details of our installation.  Admirable Casimir, one of my oldest
comrades!  It was on his advice, I may add, that I invested my little
fortune in Turkish bonds; when we have added these spoils of the mediaeval
church to our stake in the Mahometan empire, little boy, we shall
positively roll among doubloons, positively roll!  Beautiful forest,' he
cried, 'farewell!  Though called to other scenes, I will not forget thee.
Thy name is graven in my heart.  Under the influence of prosperity I
become dithyrambic, Jean-Marie.  Such is the impulse of the natural soul;
such was the constitution of primaeval man.  And I--well, I will not
refuse the credit--I have preserved my youth like a virginity; another,
who should have led the same snoozing, countryfied existence for these
years, another had become rusted, become stereotype; but I, I praise my
happy constitution, retain the spring unbroken.  Fresh opulence and a new
sphere of duties find me unabated in ardour and only more mature by
knowledge.  For this prospective change, Jean-Marie--it may probably have
shocked you.  Tell me now, did it not strike you as an inconsistency?
Confess--it is useless to dissemble--it pained you?'

'Yes,' said the boy.

'You see,' returned the Doctor, with sublime fatuity, 'I read your
thoughts!  Nor am I surprised--your education is not yet complete; the
higher duties of men have not been yet presented to you fully.  A
hint--till we have leisure--must suffice.  Now that I am once more in
possession of a modest competence; now that I have so long prepared
myself in silent meditation, it becomes my superior duty to proceed to
Paris.  My scientific training, my undoubted command of language, mark me
out for the service of my country.  Modesty in such a case would be a
snare.  If sin were a philosophical expression, I should call it sinful.
A man must not deny his manifest abilities, for that is to evade his
obligations.  I must be up and doing; I must be no skulker in life's
battle.'

So he rattled on, copiously greasing the joint of his inconsistency with
words; while the boy listened silently, his eyes fixed on the horse, his
mind seething.  It was all lost eloquence; no array of words could
unsettle a belief of Jean-Marie's; and he drove into Fontainebleau filled
with pity, horror, indignation, and despair.

In the town Jean-Marie was kept a fixture on the driving-seat, to guard
the treasure; while the Doctor, with a singular, slightly tipsy airiness
of manner, fluttered in and out of cafes, where he shook hands with
garrison officers, and mixed an absinthe with the nicety of old
experience; in and out of shops, from which he returned laden with costly
fruits, real turtle, a magnificent piece of silk for his wife, a
preposterous cane for himself, and a kepi of the newest fashion for the
boy; in and out of the telegraph office, whence he despatched his
telegram, and where three hours later he received an answer promising a
visit on the morrow; and generally pervaded Fontainebleau with the first
fine aroma of his divine good humour.

The sun was very low when they set forth again; the shadows of the forest
trees extended across the broad white road that led them home; the
penetrating odour of the evening wood had already arisen, like a cloud of
incense, from that broad field of tree-tops; and even in the streets of
the town, where the air had been baked all day between white walls, it
came in whiffs and pulses, like a distant music.  Half-way home, the last
gold flicker vanished from a great oak upon the left; and when they came
forth beyond the borders of the wood, the plain was already sunken in
pearly greyness, and a great, pale moon came swinging skyward through the
filmy poplars.

The Doctor sang, the Doctor whistled, the Doctor talked.  He spoke of the
woods, and the wars, and the deposition of dew; he brightened and babbled
of Paris; he soared into cloudy bombast on the glories of the political
arena.  All was to be changed; as the day departed, it took with it the
vestiges of an outworn existence, and to-morrow's sun was to inaugurate
the new.  'Enough,' he cried, 'of this life of maceration!'  His wife
(still beautiful, or he was sadly partial) was to be no longer buried;
she should now shine before society.  Jean-Marie would find the world at
his feet; the roads open to success, wealth, honour, and post-humous
renown.  'And O, by the way,' said he, 'for God's sake keep your tongue
quiet!  You are, of course, a very silent fellow; it is a quality I
gladly recognise in you--silence, golden silence!  But this is a matter
of gravity.  No word must get abroad; none but the good Casimir is to be
trusted; we shall probably dispose of the vessels in England.'

'But are they not even ours?' the boy said, almost with a sob--it was the
only time he had spoken.

'Ours in this sense, that they are nobody else's,' replied the Doctor.
'But the State would have some claim.  If they were stolen, for instance,
we should be unable to demand their restitution; we should have no title;
we should be unable even to communicate with the police.  Such is the
monstrous condition of the law. {263}  It is a mere instance of what
remains to be done, of the injustices that may yet be righted by an
ardent, active, and philosophical deputy.'

Jean-Marie put his faith in Madame Desprez; and as they drove forward
down the road from Bourron, between the rustling poplars, he prayed in
his teeth, and whipped up the horse to an unusual speed.  Surely, as soon
as they arrived, madame would assert her character, and bring this waking
nightmare to an end.

Their entrance into Gretz was heralded and accompanied by a most furious
barking; all the dogs in the village seemed to smell the treasure in the
noddy.  But there was no one in the street, save three lounging landscape
painters at Tentaillon's door.  Jean-Marie opened the green gate and led
in the horse and carriage; and almost at the same moment Madame Desprez
came to the kitchen threshold with a lighted lantern; for the moon was
not yet high enough to clear the garden walls.

'Close the gates, Jean-Marie!' cried the Doctor, somewhat unsteadily
alighting.  'Anastasie, where is Aline?'

'She has gone to Montereau to see her parents,' said madame.

'All is for the best!' exclaimed the Doctor fervently.  'Here, quick,
come near to me; I do not wish to speak too loud,' he continued.
'Darling, we are wealthy!'

'Wealthy!' repeated the wife.

'I have found the treasure of Franchard,' replied her husband.  'See,
here are the first fruits; a pineapple, a dress for my ever-beautiful--it
will suit her--trust a husband's, trust a lover's, taste!  Embrace me,
darling!  This grimy episode is over; the butterfly unfolds its painted
wings.  To-morrow Casimir will come; in a week we may be in Paris--happy
at last!  You shall have diamonds.  Jean-Marie, take it out of the boot,
with religious care, and bring it piece by piece into the dining-room.  We
shall have plate at table!  Darling, hasten and prepare this turtle; it
will be a whet--it will be an addition to our meagre ordinary.  I myself
will proceed to the cellar.  We shall have a bottle of that little
Beaujolais you like, and finish with the Hermitage; there are still three
bottles left.  Worthy wine for a worthy occasion.'

'But, my husband; you put me in a whirl,' she cried.  'I do not
comprehend.'

'The turtle, my adored, the turtle!' cried the doctor; and he pushed her
towards the kitchen, lantern and all.

Jean-Marie stood dumfounded.  He had pictured to himself a different
scene--a more immediate protest, and his hope began to dwindle on the
spot.

The Doctor was everywhere, a little doubtful on his legs, perhaps, and
now and then taking the wall with his shoulder; for it was long since he
had tasted absinthe, and he was even then reflecting that the absinthe
had been a misconception.  Not that he regretted excess on such a
glorious day, but he made a mental memorandum to beware; he must not, a
second time, become the victim of a deleterious habit.  He had his wine
out of the cellar in a twinkling; he arranged the sacrificial vessels,
some on the white table-cloth, some on the sideboard, still crusted with
historic earth.  He was in and out of the kitchen, plying Anastasie with
vermouth, heating her with glimpses of the future, estimating their new
wealth at ever larger figures; and before they sat down to supper, the
lady's virtue had melted in the fire of his enthusiasm, her timidity had
disappeared; she, too, had begun to speak disparagingly of the life at
Gretz; and as she took her place and helped the soup, her eyes shone with
the glitter of prospective diamonds.

All through the meal, she and the Doctor made and unmade fairy plans.
They bobbed and bowed and pledged each other.  Their faces ran over with
smiles; their eyes scattered sparkles, as they projected the Doctor's
political honours and the lady's drawing-room ovations.

'But you will not be a Red!' cried Anastasie.

'I am Left Centre to the core,' replied the Doctor.

'Madame Gastein will present us--we shall find ourselves forgotten,' said
the lady.

'Never,' protested the Doctor.  'Beauty and talent leave a mark.'

'I have positively forgotten how to dress,' she sighed.

'Darling, you make me blush,' cried he.  'Yours has been a tragic
marriage!'

'But your success--to see you appreciated, honoured, your name in all the
papers, that will be more than pleasure--it will be heaven!' she cried.

'And once a week,' said the Doctor, archly scanning the syllables, 'once
a week--one good little game of baccarat?'

'Only once a week?' she questioned, threatening him with a finger.

'I swear it by my political honour,' cried he.

'I spoil you,' she said, and gave him her hand.

He covered it with kisses.

Jean-Marie escaped into the night.  The moon swung high over Gretz.  He
went down to the garden end and sat on the jetty.  The river ran by with
eddies of oily silver, and a low, monotonous song.  Faint veils of mist
moved among the poplars on the farther side.  The reeds were quietly
nodding.  A hundred times already had the boy sat, on such a night, and
watched the streaming river with untroubled fancy.  And this perhaps was
to be the last.  He was to leave this familiar hamlet, this green,
rustling country, this bright and quiet stream; he was to pass into the
great city; his dear lady mistress was to move bedizened in saloons; his
good, garrulous, kind-hearted master to become a brawling deputy; and
both be lost for ever to Jean-Marie and their better selves.  He knew his
own defects; he knew he must sink into less and less consideration in the
turmoil of a city life, sink more and more from the child into the
servant.  And he began dimly to believe the Doctor's prophecies of evil.
He could see a change in both.  His generous incredulity failed him for
this once; a child must have perceived that the Hermitage had completed
what the absinthe had begun.  If this were the first day, what would be
the last?  'If necessary, wreck the train,' thought he, remembering the
Doctor's parable.  He looked round on the delightful scene; he drank deep
of the charmed night air, laden with the scent of hay.  'If necessary,
wreck the train,' he repeated.  And he rose and returned to the house.



CHAPTER VI.  A CRIMINAL INVESTIGATION, IN TWO PARTS.


The next morning there was a most unusual outcry, in the Doctor's house.
The last thing before going to bed, the Doctor had locked up some
valuables in the dining-room cupboard; and behold, when he rose again, as
he did about four o'clock, the cupboard had been broken open, and the
valuables in question had disappeared.  Madame and Jean-Marie were
summoned from their rooms, and appeared in hasty toilets; they found the
Doctor raving, calling the heavens to witness and avenge his injury,
pacing the room bare-footed, with the tails of his night-shirt flirting
as he turned.

'Gone!' he said; 'the things are gone, the fortune gone!  We are paupers
once more.  Boy! what do you know of this?  Speak up, sir, speak up.  Do
you know of it?  Where are they?'  He had him by the arm, shaking him
like a bag, and the boy's words, if he had any, were jolted forth in
inarticulate murmurs.  The Doctor, with a revulsion from his own
violence, set him down again.  He observed Anastasie in tears.
'Anastasie,' he said, in quite an altered voice, 'compose yourself,
command your feelings.  I would not have you give way to passion like the
vulgar.  This--this trifling accident must be lived down.  Jean-Marie,
bring me my smaller medicine chest.  A gentle laxative is indicated.'

And he dosed the family all round, leading the way himself with a double
quantity.  The wretched Anastasie, who had never been ill in the whole
course of her existence, and whose soul recoiled from remedies, wept
floods of tears as she sipped, and shuddered, and protested, and then was
bullied and shouted at until she sipped again.  As for Jean-Marie, he
took his portion down with stoicism.

'I have given him a less amount,' observed the Doctor, 'his youth
protecting him against emotion.  And now that we have thus parried any
morbid consequences, let us reason.'

'I am so cold,' wailed Anastasie.

'Cold!' cried the Doctor.  'I give thanks to God that I am made of
fierier material.  Why, madam, a blow like this would set a frog into a
transpiration.  If you are cold, you can retire; and, by the way, you
might throw me down my trousers.  It is chilly for the legs.'

'Oh, no!' protested Anastasie; 'I will stay with you.'

'Nay, madam, you shall not suffer for your devotion,' said the Doctor.  'I
will myself fetch you a shawl.'  And he went upstairs and returned more
fully clad and with an armful of wraps for the shivering Anastasie.  'And
now,' he resumed, 'to investigate this crime.  Let us proceed by
induction.  Anastasie, do you know anything that can help us?'  Anastasie
knew nothing.  'Or you, Jean-Marie?'

'Not I,' replied the boy steadily.

'Good,' returned the Doctor.  'We shall now turn our attention to the
material evidences.  (I was born to be a detective; I have the eye and
the systematic spirit.)  First, violence has been employed.  The door was
broken open; and it may be observed, in passing, that the lock was dear
indeed at what I paid for it: a crow to pluck with Master Goguelat.
Second, here is the instrument employed, one of our own table-knives, one
of our best, my dear; which seems to indicate no preparation on the part
of the gang--if gang it was.  Thirdly, I observe that nothing has been
removed except the Franchard dishes and the casket; our own silver has
been minutely respected.  This is wily; it shows intelligence, a
knowledge of the code, a desire to avoid legal consequences.  I argue
from this fact that the gang numbers persons of respectability--outward,
of course, and merely outward, as the robbery proves.  But I argue,
second, that we must have been observed at Franchard itself by some
occult observer, and dogged throughout the day with a skill and patience
that I venture to qualify as consummate.  No ordinary man, no occasional
criminal, would have shown himself capable of this combination.  We have
in our neighbourhood, it is far from improbable, a retired bandit of the
highest order of intelligence.'

'Good heaven!' cried the horrified Anastasie.  'Henri, how can you?'

'My cherished one, this is a process of induction,' said the Doctor.  'If
any of my steps are unsound, correct me.  You are silent?  Then do not, I
beseech you, be so vulgarly illogical as to revolt from my conclusion.  We
have now arrived,' he resumed, 'at some idea of the composition of the
gang--for I incline to the hypothesis of more than one--and we now leave
this room, which can disclose no more, and turn our attention to the
court and garden.  (Jean-Marie, I trust you are observantly following my
various steps; this is an excellent piece of education for you.)  Come
with me to the door.  No steps on the court; it is unfortunate our court
should be paved.  On what small matters hang the destiny of these
delicate investigations!  Hey!  What have we here?  I have led on to the
very spot,' he said, standing grandly backward and indicating the green
gate.  'An escalade, as you can now see for yourselves, has taken place.'

Sure enough, the green paint was in several places scratched and broken;
and one of the panels preserved the print of a nailed shoe.  The foot had
slipped, however, and it was difficult to estimate the size of the shoe,
and impossible to distinguish the pattern of the nails.

'The whole robbery,' concluded the Doctor, 'step by step, has been
reconstituted.  Inductive science can no further go.'

'It is wonderful,' said his wife.  'You should indeed have been a
detective, Henri.  I had no idea of your talents.'

'My dear,' replied Desprez, condescendingly, 'a man of scientific
imagination combines the lesser faculties; he is a detective just as he
is a publicist or a general; these are but local applications of his
special talent.  But now,' he continued, 'would you have me go further?
Would you have me lay my finger on the culprits--or rather, for I cannot
promise quite so much, point out to you the very house where they
consort?  It may be a satisfaction, at least it is all we are likely to
get, since we are denied the remedy of law.  I reach the further stage in
this way.  In order to fill my outline of the robbery, I require a man
likely to be in the forest idling, I require a man of education, I
require a man superior to considerations of morality.  The three
requisites all centre in Tentaillon's boarders.  They are painters,
therefore they are continually lounging in the forest.  They are
painters, therefore they are not unlikely to have some smattering of
education.  Lastly, because they are painters, they are probably immoral.
And this I prove in two ways.  First, painting is an art which merely
addresses the eye; it does not in any particular exercise the moral
sense.  And second, painting, in common with all the other arts, implies
the dangerous quality of imagination.  A man of imagination is never
moral; he outsoars literal demarcations and reviews life under too many
shifting lights to rest content with the invidious distinctions of the
law!'

'But you always say--at least, so I understood you'--said madame, 'that
these lads display no imagination whatever.'

'My dear, they displayed imagination, and of a very fantastic order,
too,' returned the Doctor, 'when they embraced their beggarly profession.
Besides--and this is an argument exactly suited to your intellectual
level--many of them are English and American.  Where else should we
expect to find a thief?--And now you had better get your coffee.  Because
we have lost a treasure, there is no reason for starving.  For my part, I
shall break my fast with white wine.  I feel unaccountably heated and
thirsty to-day.  I can only attribute it to the shock of the discovery.
And yet, you will bear me out, I supported the emotion nobly.'

The Doctor had now talked himself back into an admirable humour; and as
he sat in the arbour and slowly imbibed a large allowance of white wine
and picked a little bread and cheese with no very impetuous appetite, if
a third of his meditations ran upon the missing treasure, the other two-
thirds were more pleasingly busied in the retrospect of his detective
skill.

About eleven Casimir arrived; he had caught an early train to
Fontainebleau, and driven over to save time; and now his cab was stabled
at Tentaillon's, and he remarked, studying his watch, that he could spare
an hour and a half.  He was much the man of business, decisively spoken,
given to frowning in an intellectual manner.  Anastasie's born brother,
he did not waste much sentiment on the lady, gave her an English family
kiss, and demanded a meal without delay.

'You can tell me your story while we eat,' he observed.  'Anything good
to-day, Stasie?'

He was promised something good.  The trio sat down to table in the
arbour, Jean-Marie waiting as well as eating, and the Doctor recounted
what had happened in his richest narrative manner.  Casimir heard it with
explosions of laughter.

'What a streak of luck for you, my good brother,' he observed, when the
tale was over.  'If you had gone to Paris, you would have played dick-
duck-drake with the whole consignment in three months.  Your own would
have followed; and you would have come to me in a procession like the
last time.  But I give you warning--Stasie may weep and Henri
ratiocinate--it will not serve you twice.  Your next collapse will be
fatal.  I thought I had told you so, Stasie?  Hey?  No sense?'

The Doctor winced and looked furtively at Jean-Marie; but the boy seemed
apathetic.

'And then again,' broke out Casimir, 'what children you are--vicious
children, my faith!  How could you tell the value of this trash?  It
might have been worth nothing, or next door.'

'Pardon me,' said the Doctor.  'You have your usual flow of spirits, I
perceive, but even less than your usual deliberation.  I am not entirely
ignorant of these matters.'

'Not entirely ignorant of anything ever I heard of,' interrupted Casimir,
bowing, and raising his glass with a sort of pert politeness.

'At least,' resumed the Doctor, 'I gave my mind to the subject--that you
may be willing to believe--and I estimated that our capital would be
doubled.'  And he described the nature of the find.

'My word of honour!' said Casimir, 'I half believe you!  But much would
depend on the quality of the gold.'

'The quality, my dear Casimir, was--'  And the Doctor, in default of
language, kissed his finger-tips.

'I would not take your word for it, my good friend,' retorted the man of
business.  'You are a man of very rosy views.  But this robbery,' he
continued--'this robbery is an odd thing.  Of course I pass over your
nonsense about gangs and landscape-painters.  For me, that is a dream.
Who was in the house last night?'

'None but ourselves,' replied the Doctor.

'And this young gentleman?' asked Casimir, jerking a nod in the direction
of Jean-Marie.

'He too'--the Doctor bowed.

'Well; and if it is a fair question, who is he?' pursued the brother-in-
law.

'Jean-Marie,' answered the Doctor, 'combines the functions of a son and
stable-boy.  He began as the latter, but he rose rapidly to the more
honourable rank in our affections.  He is, I may say, the greatest
comfort in our lives.'