"Oh, nothing," the man in black answered carelessly. "Mademoiselle is beautiful, and monsieur is a happy man if she smiles on him. But she is high-born; and proud, I am told." He leaned forward as he spoke, and warmed his long, lean hands at the fire. But his beady eyes never left the other's face.

M. de Vidoche writhed under their gaze. "Curse you!" he muttered hoa.r.s.ely. "What do you mean?"

"Her family are proud also, I am told; and powerful. Friends of the Cardinal too, I hear." The man in black's smile was like nothing save the crocodile's.

M. de Vidoche rose from his seat, but sat down again.

"He would avenge the honour of the family to the death," continued the astrologer gently. "To the death, I should say. Don't you think so, M. de Vidoche?"

The perspiration stood in thick drops on the young man's forehead, and he glared at his tormentor. But the latter met the look placidly, and seemed ignorant of the effect he was producing. "It is a pity, therefore, monsieur is not free to marry," he said, shaking his head regretfully--"a great pity. One does not know what may happen. Yet, on the other hand, if he had not married he would be a poor man now."

M. de Vidoche sprang to his feet with an oath. But he sat down again.

"When he married he was a poor man, I think," the astrologer continued, for the first time averting his gaze from the other's face, and looking into the fire with a queer smile. "And in debt. Madame--the present Madame de Vidoche, I mean--paid his debts, and brought him an estate, I believe."

"Of which she has never ceased to remind him twice a day since!" the young man cried in a terrible voice. And then in a moment he lost all self-control, all disguise, all the timid cunning which had marked him hitherto. He sprang to his feet. The veins in his temples swelled, his face grew red. So true is it that small things try us more than great ones, and small grievances rub deeper raws than great wrongs. "My G.o.d!" he said between his teeth, "if you knew what I have suffered from that woman! Pale-faced, puling fool, I have loathed her these five years, and I have been tied to her and her whining ways and her nun's face! Twice a day? No, ten times a day, twenty times a day, she has reminded me of my debts, my poverty, and my straits before I married her! And of her family! And her three marshals! And her----"

He stopped for very lack of breath. "Madame was of good family?" the man in black said abruptly. He had grown suddenly attentive. His shadow on the wall behind him was still and straight-backed.

"Oh, yes," the husband answered bitterly.

"In Perigord?'

"Oh, yes."

"Three marshals of France?" M. Notredame murmured thoughtfully; but there was a strange light in his eyes, and he kept his face carefully averted from his companion. "That is not common! That is certainly something to boast of!"

"Mon Dieu! She did boast of it, though no one else allowed the claim. And of her blood of Roland!" M. de Vidoche cried, with scorn. His voice still shook, and his hands trembled with rage. He strode up and down.

"What was her name before she married?" the astrologer asked, stooping over the fire.

The young man stopped, arrested in his pa.s.sion--stopped, and looked at him suspiciously. "Her name?" he muttered. "What has that to do with it?"

"If you want me to--draw her horoscope," the astrologer replied, with a cunning smile, "I must have something to go upon."

"Diane de Martinbault," the young man answered sullenly; and then, in a fresh burst of rage, he muttered, "Diane! Diable!"

"She inherited her estates from her father?"

"Yes."

"Who had a son? A child who died young?" the astrologer continued coolly.

M. de Vidoche looked at him. "That is true," he said sulkily. "But I do not see what it has to do with you."

For answer, the man in black began to laugh, at first silently, then aloud--a sly devil's laugh, that sounded more like the glee of fiends sporting over a lost soul than any human mirth, so full was it of derision and mockery and insult. He made no attempt to check or disguise it, but rather seemed to flout it in the other's face; for when the young n.o.ble asked him, with fierce impatience, what it was, and what he meant, he did not explain. He only cried, "In a moment! In a moment, n.o.ble sir, I swear you shall have what you want. But--ha! ha!" And then he fell to laughing again, more loudly and shrilly than before.

M. de Vidoche turned white and red with rage. His first thought was that a trap had been laid for him, and that he had fallen into it; that to what he had said there had been witnesses; and that now the astrologer had thrown off the mask. With a horrible expression of shame and fear on his countenance he stood at bay, peering into the dark corners, of which there were many in that room, and plumbing the shadows. When no one appeared and nothing happened, his fears pa.s.sed, but not his rage. With his hand on his sword, he turned hotly on his confederate. "You dog!" he said between his teeth, and his eyes gleamed dangerously in the light of the lamp, "know that for a farthing I would slit your throat! And I will, too, if you do not this instant stop that witch's grin of yours! Are you going to do what I ask, or are you not?"

"Chut! chut!" the astrologer answered, waving his hand in deprecation. "I said so, and I am always as good as my word."

"Ay, but now--now!" the young man retorted furiously. "You have played with me long enough. Do you think that I am going to spend the night in this charnel-house of yours?"

M. Notredame began to fear that he had carried his cruel amus.e.m.e.nt too far. He had enjoyed himself vastly, and made an unexpected discovery: one which opened an endless vista of mischief and plunder to his astute gaze. But it was not his policy to drive his customer to distraction, and he changed his tone. "Peace, peace," he said, spreading out his hands humbly. "You shall have it now; now, this instant. There is only one little preliminary."

"Name it!" the other said imperiously.

"The price. A horoscope, with the House of Death in the ascendant--the Upper Portal, as we call it--is a hundred crowns, M. de Vidoche. There is the risk, you see."

"You shall have it. Give me the--the stuff!"

The young man's voice trembled, but it was with anger and impatience, not with fear. The astrologer recognised the change in him, and fell into his place. He went, without further demur, to a little shelf in the darkest corner of the laboratory, whence he reached down a crucible. He was in the act of peering into this, with his back to his visitor, when M. de Vidoche uttered a startled cry, and, springing towards him, seized his arm. "You fiend!" the young man hissed--he was pale to the lips, and shook as with an ague--"there is someone there! There is someone listening!"

[Ill.u.s.tration: "FOR A SECOND THE MAN IN BLACK STOOD BREATHLESS" (p. 92).]

For a second the man in black stood breathless, his hand arrested, the shadow of his companion's terror darkening his face. M. de Vidoche pointed with a trembling finger to the staircase which led to the farther part of the house, and on this the two bent their sombre, guilty eyes. The lamp burned unsteadily, giving out an odour of smoke. The room was full of shadows, uncouth distorted shapes, that rose and fell with the light, and had something terrifying in their sudden appearances and vanishings. But in all the place there was nothing so appalling or so ugly as the two vicious, panic-stricken faces that glared into the darkness.

The man in black was the first to break the silence. "What did you hear?" he muttered at length, after a long, long period of waiting and watching.

"Someone moved there," Vidoche answered, under his breath. His voice still trembled; his face was livid with terror.

"Nonsense!" the other answered. He knew the place, and was fast recovering his courage. "What was the sound like, man?"

"A dull, heavy sound. Someone moved."

M. Notredame laughed, but not pleasantly. "It was the toad," he said. "There is no other living thing here. The door on the staircase is locked. It is thick, too. A dozen men might be behind it, yet they would not hear a word that pa.s.sed in this room. But come; you shall see."

He led the way to the farther end of the room, and, moving some of the larger things, showed M. de Vidoche that there was no one there. Still, the young man was only half-convinced. Even when the toad was found lurking in a skull which had rolled to the floor, he continued to glance about him doubtfully. "I do not think it was that," he said. "Are you sure that the door is locked?"

"Try it," the astrologer answered curtly.

M. de Vidoche did, and nodded. "Yes," he said. "All the same, I will get out of this, Give me the stuff, will you?"

The man in black raised the lamp in one hand, and with the other selected from the crucible two tiny yellow packets. He stood a moment, weighing them in his hand and looking lovingly at them, and seemed unwilling to part with them. "They are power," he said, in a voice that was little above a whisper. The alarm had tried even his nerves, and he was not quite himself. "The greatest power of all--death. They are the key of the Upper Portal--the true Pulvis Olympicus. Take one to-day, one to-morrow, in liquid, and you will feel neither hunger, nor cold, nor want, nor desire any more for ever. The late King of England took one; but there, it is yours, my friend."

"Is it painful?" the young man whispered, shuddering, and with eyes averted.

The tempter grinned horribly. "What is that to you?" he said. "It will not bring her mouth to the back of her neck. That is enough for you to know."

"It will not be detected?"

"Not by the bunglers they call doctors," the astrologer answered scornfully. "Blind bats! You may trust me for that. Of what did the King of England die? A tertian ague. So will madame. But if you think----"

He stopped on a sudden, his hand in the air, and the two stood gazing at one another with alarm printed on their faces. The loud clanging note of a bell, harshly struck in the house, came dolefully to their ears "What is it?" M. de Vidoche muttered uneasily.

"A client," the astrologer answered quietly. "I will see. Do not stir until I come back to you."

M. de Vidoche made an impatient movement towards the door in the Rue Touchet: and doubtless he would much have preferred to be gone at once, since he had now got what he wanted. But the man in black was already unlocking the door at the head of the little staircase, and uttering a querulous oath M. de Vidoche resigned himself to wait. With a dark look he hid the powders on his person.

He thought himself alone. But all the same a white-faced boy lay within a few feet of him, watching his every movement, and listening to his breathing--a small boy, instinct with hate and loathing. Impunity renders people careless, or M. Notredame would not have been so ready to set down the noise his confederate made to the toad. The Judas-hole and the spying-place would have come to mind, and in a trice he would have caught the listener in the act, and this history would never have been written.

For Jehan, though his master's first entrance and appearance had sent him fleeing, breathless and panic-stricken, from his post, had not been able to keep aloof long. The house was dull, silent, dark; only in the closet was amus.e.m.e.nt to be found. So while terror dragged him one way, curiosity haled him the other, and at last had the victory. He listened and shivered at the head of the stairs until that shrill eldritch peal of laughter in which the astrologer indulged, and for which he was destined to pay dearly, penetrated even the thick door. Then he could hold out no longer. His curiosity grew intolerable. Laughter! Laughter in that house! Slowly and stealthily the boy opened the door of the dark closet, and crept in. Just across the threshold he stumbled over the extinguished taper, and this it was which caused M. de Vidoche's alarm.

Jehan fancied himself discovered, and lay sweating and trembling until the search for the toad was over. Then he sat up, and, finding himself safe, began to listen. What he heard was not clear, nor perfectly intelligible; but gradually there stole even into his boyish mind a perception of something horrible. The speakers' looks of fear, their low tones and dark glances, the panic which seized them when they fancied themselves overheard, and their relief when nothing came of it, did more to bring the conviction home to his mind than their words. Even of these he caught enough to a.s.sure him that someone was to be poisoned--to be put out of the world. Only the name of the victim--that escaped him.

Probably M. de Vidoche, left to himself, found, his thoughts poor company, for by-and-by he grew restless. He walked across the room and listened, and walked again and listened. The latter movement brought him by chance to the foot of the little flight of six steps by which the astrologer had retired, and he looked up and saw that the door at the top was ajar. Impelled by curiosity, or suspicion, or the mere desire to escape from himself, he stole up, and, opening it farther, thrust his head through and listened.

He remained in this position about a minute. Then he turned, and crept down again, and stood, thinking, at the foot of the stairs, with an expression of such utter and complete amazement on his face as almost transformed the man. Something he had heard or seen which he could not understand! Something incredible, something almost miraculous! For all else, even his guilty purpose, seemed swallowed up in sheer astonishment.

The stupor held him until he heard the astrologer's steps. Even then he only turned and looked. But if ever dumb lips asked a question, his did then.

The man in black nodded silently. He seemed not at all surprised that the other had heard or seen what he had. Even in him the thing, whatever it was, had worked a change. His eyes shone, his eyebrows were raised, his face wore a pale smile of triumph and conceit.

M. de Vidoche found his voice at last "My wife!" he whispered.

The astrologer's shoulders went up to his ears. He spread out his hands. He nodded--once, twice. "Mais oui, Madame!" he said.

"Here?--now?" M. de Vidoche stammered, his eyes wide with astonishment.

"She is in the chamber of the astrolabe."

"Mon Dieu!" the husband exclaimed. "Mon Dieu!" And then for a moment he shook, as if someone were pa.s.sing over his grave. His face was pale. There was dread mingled with his surprise. "I do not understand," he muttered at last. "What does it mean? What is she doing here?"

"She has come for a love-philtre," M. Notredame answered, with a sphinx-like smile.

"For whom?"

"For you."

The husband drew a deep breath. "For me?" he exclaimed. "Impossible!"

"Possible," the man in black answered quietly; "and true."

"Then what shall you do?"

"Give her one," the astrologer answered. The enigmatical smile, which had been all along playing on his face, grew deeper, keener, more cruel. His eyes gleamed with triumph--and evil. "I shall give her one," he said again.

"But--what will she do with it?" M. de Vidoche muttered.

"Take it! You fool, cannot you understand?" the man in black answered sharply. "Give me back the powders. I shall give them to her. She will take them--herself. You will be saved--all!"

M. de Vidoche reeled. "My G.o.d!" he cried. "I think you are the devil!"

"Perhaps," the man in black answered "but give me the powders."

CHAPTER VI.

THE POWDER OF ATTRACTION.

Meanwhile, a few yards away, in the room of the astrolabe, Madame de Vidoche sat, waiting and trembling, afraid to move from the spot where the astrologer had placed her, and longing for his return. The minutes seemed endless, the house a grave. The silence and mystery which wrapped her round, the sombre hangings, the burning candles, the cabalistic figures filled her with awe and apprehension. She was a timid woman; nothing but that last and fiercest hunger of all, the hunger for love, could have driven her to this desperate step or brought her here. But she was here, it had brought her; and though fear blanched her cheek, and her limbs shook under her, and she dared not pray--for what was this she was doing?--she did not repent, or wish the step untaken, or go back on her desire.

The place was dreadful to her; but not so dreadful as the cold home, the harsh words, the mockery of love, the slowly growing knowledge that there never had been love, from which she was here to escape. She was alone, but not more lonely than she had been for months in her own house. The man who daily met her with gibes and taunts, and seldom spoke without reminding her how pale and colourless she showed beside the florid witty beauties of the Court--his friends--was still her all, and had been her idol. If he failed her, the world was empty indeed. Only one thing remained therefore; by hook or crook, by all a woman might do or dare, by submission, by courage, to win back his love. She had tried. G.o.d knows she had tried! She had knelt to him, and he had struck her. She had dressed and been gay, and striven to jest as his friends jested: he had scourged her with a cutting sneer. She had prayed, and Heaven had not answered. She had turned from Heaven--a white-faced, pining woman, little more than a girl--and she was here.

Only let the man be quick! Let him be quick and give her what she sought; and then scarcely any price he could ask should strain her grat.i.tude. At last she heard his step, and in a moment he came in. Against the black background, and seen by the gloomy light of the candles, he looked taller, leaner, paler, more sombre than life. His eyes glowed with unnatural l.u.s.tre. Madame shuddered as he came towards her; and he saw it, and grinned behind his cadaverous mask.

"Madame," he said gravely, bowing his head, "it is as I hoped. Venus is in the ascendant for nine days from to-day, and in fortunate conjunction with Mars. I am happy that you come to me at a time so propitious. A very little effort at this season will suffice. But it is necessary, if you would have the charm work, to preserve the most absolute silence and secrecy in regard to it."

Her lips were dry, her tongue seemed to cleave to her mouth. She felt shame as well as fear in this man's presence. But she made an effort, and muttered, "It will work?"

"I will answer for it!" he replied bluntly, a world of dubious meaning in his tone and eyes. "It is the powder of attraction, by the use of which Diane de Poitiers won the love of the king, though she surpa.s.sed him by twenty years; and Madame de Valentinois held the hearts of men till her seventieth winter. Madame de Hautefort uses it. It is made of liquid gold, etherealised and strengthened with secret drugs. I have made up two packets, but it will be safer if madame will take both at once, dissolved in good wine and before the expiration of the ninth day."

Madame de Vidoche took the packets, trembling. A little red dyed her pale cheeks. "Is that all?" she murmured, faintly.

"All, madame; except that when you drink it, you must think of your husband," he answered. As he said this he averted his face; for, try as he would, he could not check the evil smile that curled his lip. Dieu! Was ever so grim a jest known? Or so forlorn, so helpless, so infantine a fool? He could almost find it in his heart to pity her. As for her husband--ah, how he would bleed him when it was over!

"How much am I to pay you, sir?" she asked timidly, when she had hidden away the precious packets in her bosom. She had got what she wanted; she was panting to be gone.

"Twenty crowns," he answered, coldly. "The charm avails for nine moons. After that----"

"I shall need more?" she asked; for he had paused.

"Well, no, I think not," he answered slowly--hesitating strangely, almost stammering. "I think in your case, madame, the effect will be lasting."

She had no clue to the fantastic impulse, the ghastly humour, which inspired the words; and she paid him gladly. He would not take the money in his hands, but bade her lay it on the great open book, "because the gold was alloyed, and not virgin." In one or two other ways he played his part; directing her, for instance, if she would increase the strength of the charm, to gaze at the planet Venus for half an hour each evening, but not through gla.s.s or with any metal on her person. And then he let her out by the door which opened on the quiet street.

"Madame has, doubtless, her woman, or some attendant?" he said, looking up and down. "Or I----"

"Oh, yes, yes!" she answered, gasping in the cold night air. "She is here. Goodnight, sir."

He muttered some words in a strange tongue, and, as Madame de Vidoche's attendant came out of the shadow to meet her, turned and went in again.

The night was dark as well as cold, but madame, in the first fervour of her spirits, did not heed it. She suffered her maid to wrap her up warmly, and draw the cloak more closely round her throat; but she was scarcely conscious of the attention, and bore it as a child might--in silence. Her eyes shone in the darkness; her heart beat with a soft subtle joy. She had the charm--the key to happiness! It was in her bosom; and every moment, under cover of the cloak and night, her fingers flew to it and a.s.sured her it was safe. The scruples with which she had contemplated the interview troubled her no longer. In her joy and relief that the ordeal was over and the philtre gained, she knew no doubt, no suspicion. She lived only for the moment when she might put the talisman to the test, and see love wake again in those eyes which, whether they smiled or scowled, fate had made the lodestones of her life.

The streets, by reason of the cold, were quiet enough. No one remarked the two women as they flitted along under cover of the wall. Presently, however, the bell of a church close at hand began to ring for service, and the sound, startling madame, brought her suddenly, chillily, sharply, to earth again. She stopped. "What is that?" she said. "It cannot be compline. It wants three hours of midnight."

"It is St. Thomas's Day," the woman with her answered.