insane. He had once a wild fancy to fill this house with everything white; and when that was done, he found himself ill at ease, and sent me with a note to summon you to bleed him. After that evening funds got low. Our whiteness was quickly smirched. He and I robbed many a traveller, and many a mail. My fellow-lackey generally kept house here with the concierge guarding the front door, and a porter guarding the garden entrance. But if Eugène is dead, then all is over. We must take care of ourselves. Sir, we must go, lest the officers of justice find us."
With those words the man passed into the second room. There sat the other lackey, practising some trick by which to cheat at cards.
"Eugène is dead; let us save ourselves!"
The two men went into the bedroom—formerly that of the unhappy Eugène. They snatched up the firearms which stood in the corners, and opening what looked like the door of a cupboard, stepped out on a landing of the main staircase. They ran down, and Isez saw them no more. Whether they continued to act as highwaymen, he never knew, but he thought that they were hardly likely to repent and amend.
The surgeon gazed with a sort of sad wonder on the soiled white furniture, on a heap of dirty white gloves, and another of dirty white stockings. Drink and play and insanity explained the mystery of the Rue du Pot-de-fer, as they explain many another mystery. Shaking his head as he went, Isez left the ghastly apartments, and by the main staircase arrived at the hall door. It stood ajar, as it had been left by the lackeys. Isez closed it, and walked away.
Mlle. Aïssé, in writing[1] of the murder of Eugène Hénon-Durant by his father, says that the Colonel "went immediately to ask for pardon; everyone was of opinion that it should be granted. A good man finding his son to be a highwayman is overwhelmed with such grief that his brain may well give way under it."
But Jean François Isez never forgot the invalid in white, and the highwayman in black—one and the same miserable young man.
- ↑ Letter IX.
