The Son of Clemenceau. Александр Дюма-сын

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ by the younger one.

      Armed with this staff, the officer, remembering his student days, when he, too, was an expert swinger of the cane, a Bavarian mountaineer's weapon with which duels to the death are not unseldom fought, he stood before the student.

      "Had you been a gentleman," began the major, with a sullen courtesy, extorted from him by the gallantry of his antagonist.

      "A stick to a dog!" retorted the latter, falling into the position of guard with an ease and accuracy which caused the other to begin his work by feints and attacks not followed up too rashly, in order to test him.

      This time, it was the stouter and more brutal man who played cautiously and the younger and more refined who was spurred into recklessness by the contiguity of the fair Helen—or, rather, Esther—who had caused the fray.

      The girl stood at the end of the bridge, opposite to Baboushka at hers, there making them simple lookers-on. The old Jew seemed eager to join in the struggle, but the staves were in continual swing, and he could not draw near without the risk of having a shoulder dislocated, or, at least, his knuckles severely rapped. In the gloom, his hovering about the involved pair would have led an opera-goer to have seen in him the demon who thus actively presides at the fatal duel of Faust and Valentine.

      But the conflict, whatever the major's wariness, could not be long protracted, for canes of this sort are tiring to the arm, unlike smallswords; he was still on the defensive when the student assailed him with a shower of blows which taxed all his skill and nerve, and the strength of the staff which he had borrowed from his foe. Well may one suspect "the gifts of an enemy!" as the student might have cited: "Timeo danaos," etc. At the very moment when the officer's head was most in peril, while he guarded it with the staff held horizontally in both hands separated widely for the critical juncture, it ominously cracked at the reception of a vigorous blow—it parted as though a steel blade had severed it, and the unresisted cane came down on his skull with crushing force.

      Out of the two cavities which the broken staff now presented, rattled several gold coins. At the sight, the old hag scrambled toward where the major had fallen senseless. The Jew, after picking up the broken pieces of wood, would have lingered to recover those of the precious metal though at cost of a scuffle with Baboushka. But his daughter rebuked him in their language with an indignant tone, which brought him to his senses in an instant. She seized him by the arm, and hurried him away at last.

      After a brief survey of the defeated man, wavering between the fear that he had killed him and the prompting to see to his hurts, if the case were not fatal, the student took to flight in the direction the beautiful girl had chosen. He well knew that this was a grave matter, and that he trod on burning ground. At twenty paces farther, he remembered his cloak, but on the bridge were now clustered several shadows vying with Baboushka in picking up the coin before raising the unfortunate Von Sendlingen.

      Not a light had appeared at the windows of the houses, not a window had opened for a night-capped head to be thurst forth, not a voice had echoed the Jewess's call for the watch. It was not to be doubted that Footbridge street had allowed more murderous outrages to occur without anyone running the risk of catching a cold or a slash of a sabre.

      "A cut-throat quarter, that is it," remarked the student, still too excited to feel the cold and want of his outer garment. "After all, one cannot travel from Berlin to Paris without getting some soot on the cheek and a cinder or two in the eye. In the same way it is not possible to see life and go through this world without being smeared with a little blood or smut."

      While talking to himself, he smoothed his dress and curled his dark and fine moustache, projecting horizontally and not drooping. He had walked so fast that he had overtaken the Jews, delayed as the girl was by her father's lameness, and having to carry the violin in its case which she had recovered and preciously guarded.

      "What an audacious bully that was," the student continued; "but even a good cat loses a mouse now and then."

      The pair seemed to expect him to join them, but as he was about to do so, at the mouth of a narrow and unlighted alley, he heard the measured tramp of feet indicating the patrol.

      Already the character of the streets and houses changed: there were vistas of those large buildings which give one the impression that Munich is planned on too generous a scale for its population. Only here and there was a roof or front suggestive of the Middle Ages, and they may have been in imitation; the others were stately and were classical, and the avenues became spacious.

      All at once, while the student was watching the semi-military constables approach, he heard an uproar toward the bridge. The major had been discovered by quite another sort of folk than the allies of Baboushka, and the alarm was given.

      To advance was to invite an arrest which would result in no pleasant investigation.

      He had tarried too long as it was. The watchman's horn—tute-horn—sounded at the bridge and the squad responded through their commander; whistles also shrilled, being police signals. The student was perceived. It was a critical moment. The next moment he would be challenged, and at the next, have a carbine or sabre levelled at his breast. He retired up the alley, precipitately, wondering where the persons whom he befriended had disappeared so quickly.

      A very faint light gleamed from deeply within, at the end of a crooked passage through a lantern-like projection at a corner. A number of iron hooks bristled over his head as if for carcasses at a butchers, although their innocent use was to hang beds on them to air. On a tarnished plate he deciphered "ARTISTES' ENTRANCE," and while perplexed, even as the gendarmes appeared at the mouth of this blind-alley, a long and taper hand was laid on his arm and a voice, very, very sweet, though in a mere murmur, said irresistibly:

      "Come! come in, or you will be lost!" He yielded, and was drawn into a corridor under the oriel window, where the air was pungent with the reek of beer, tobacco-smoke, orange-peel, cheese and caraway seeds.

      CHAPTER III.

       "THE JINGLE-JANGLE."

       Table of Contents

      The person to whom the shapely hand and musical voice belonged, conducted the student along the narrow passage to a turning where she halted, under a lamp with a reflector which threw them in that position into the shade. The passage was divided by the first lobby, and on the lamp was painted, back to back: "Men," "Ladies;" besides, a babble of feminine voices on the latter side betrayed, as the intruder suspected from the previous placard, that he had entered a place of entertainment by the stage-door, a Tingel-Tangel, or Jingle-Jangle, as we should say.

      It was the Jewess who was the Ariadne to this maze. Seen in the light, at close range, with the enchanting smile which a woman always finds for the man who has won her gratitude by supplementing her deficiency in strength and courage with his own, she was worthier love than ever. At this view, too, he was sure that, unlike too many of the divas of these spielungs, or dens, she was not one of the stray creatures who sell pleasure to some and give it to others, and for themselves keep only shame—fatal ignominy, wealth at best very unsubstantial, and if, at last, winners, they laugh—one would rather see them weeping.

      "What's your name?" she inquired, quickly. "I am Rebecca Daniels, whom they call on the Bills 'La Belle Stamboulane'—though I have never been farther east than Prague," she added with a contemptuous smile. "That was my father, whose maltreatment you so promptly but I fear so severely chastised. But your name?" impatiently.

      "I am a student of СКАЧАТЬ