"No,not much,"said the wary Italian,"only my winnings.But they would make a pretty fortune for a beggar and turn him into an honest man for the rest of his life."Diard led the marquis along a lonely street where he remembered to have seen a house,the door of which was at the end of an avenue of trees with high and gloomy walls on either side of it.When they reached this spot he coolly invited the marquis to precede him;but as if the latter understood him he preferred to keep at his side.Then,no sooner were they fairly in the avenue,then Diard,with the agility of a tiger,tripped up the marquis with a kick behind the knees,and putting a foot on his neck stabbed him again and again to the heart till the blade of the knife broke in it.Then he searched Montefiore's pockets,took his wallet,money,everything.But though he had taken the Italian unawares,and had done the deed with lucid mind and the quickness of a pickpocket,Montefiore had time to cry "Murder!Help!"in a shrill and piercing voice which was fit to rouse every sleeper in the neighborhood.His last sighs were given in those horrible shrieks.
Diard was not aware that at the moment when they entered the avenue a crowd just issuing from a theatre was passing at the upper end of the street.The cries of the dying man reached them,though Diard did his best to stifle the noise by setting his foot firmly on Montefiore's neck.The crowd began to run towards the avenue,the high walls of which appeared to echo back the cries,directing them to the very spot where the crime was committed.The sound of their coming steps seemed to beat on Diard's brain.But not losing his head as yet,the murderer left the avenue and came boldly into the street,walking very gently,like a spectator who sees the inutility of trying to give help.He even turned round once or twice to judge of the distance between himself and the crowd,and he saw them rushing up the avenue,with the exception of one man,who,with a natural sense of caution,began to watch Diard.
"There he is!there he is!"cried the people,who had entered the avenue as soon as they saw Montefiore stretched out near the door of the empty house.
As soon as that clamor rose,Diard,feeling himself well in the advance,began to run or rather to fly,with the vigor of a lion and the bounds of a deer.At the other end of the street he saw,or fancied he saw,a mass of persons,and he dashed down a cross street to avoid them.But already every window was open,and heads were thrust forth right and left,while from every door came shouts and gleams of light.Diard kept on,going straight before him,through the lights and the noise;and his legs were so actively agile that he soon left the tumult behind him,though without being able to escape some eyes which took in the extent of his course more rapidly than he could cover it.Inhabitants,soldiers,gendarmes,every one,seemed afoot in the twinkling of an eye.Some men awoke the commissaries of police,others stayed by the body to guard it.The pursuit kept on in the direction of the fugitive,who dragged it after him like the flame of a conflagration.
Diard,as he ran,had all the sensations of a dream when he heard a whole city howling,running,panting after him.Nevertheless,he kept his ideas and his presence of mind.Presently he reached the wall of the garden of his house.The place was perfectly silent,and he thought he had foiled his pursuers,though a distant murmur of the tumult came to his ears like the roaring of the sea.He dipped some water from a brook and drank it.Then,observing a pile of stones on the road,he hid his treasure in it;obeying one of those vague thoughts which come to criminals at a moment when the faculty to judge their actions under all bearings deserts them,and they think to establish their innocence by want of proof of their guilt.
That done,he endeavored to assume a placid countenance;he even tried to smile as he rapped softly on the door of his house,hoping that no one saw him.He raised his eyes,and through the outer blinds of one window came a gleam of light from his wife's room.Then,in the midst of his trouble,visions of her gentle life,spent with her children,beat upon his brain with the force of a hammer.The maid opened the door,which Diard hastily closed behind him with a kick.For a moment he breathed freely;then,noticing that he was bathed in perspiration,he sent the servant back to Juana and stayed in the darkness of the passage,where he wiped his face with his handkerchief and put his clothes in order,like a dandy about to pay a visit to a pretty woman.
After that he walked into a track of the moonlight to examine his hands.A quiver of joy passed over him as he saw that no blood stains were on them;the hemorrhage from his victim's body was no doubt inward.
But all this took time.When at last he mounted the stairs to Juana's room he was calm and collected,and able to reflect on his position,which resolved itself into two ideas:to leave the house,and get to the wharves.He did not THINK these ideas,he SAW them written in fiery letters on the darkness.Once at the wharves he could hide all day,return at night for his treasure,then conceal himself,like a rat,in the hold of some vessel and escape without any one suspecting his whereabouts.But to do all this,money,gold,was his first necessity,--and he did not possess one penny.
The maid brought a light to show him up.
"Felicie,"he said,"don't you hear a noise in the street,shouts,cries?Go and see what it means,and come and tell me."His wife,in her white dressing-gown,was sitting at a table,reading aloud to Francisque and Juan from a Spanish Cervantes,while the boys followed her pronunciation of the words from the text.They all three stopped and looked at Diard,who stood in the doorway with his hands in his pockets;overcome,perhaps,by finding himself in this calm scene,so softly lighted,so beautiful with the faces of his wife and children.It was a living picture of the Virgin between her son and John.
