Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/22

10 there they lay pell-mell, one atop of another, almost indistinguishable in the semi-darkness. This garret was the limbo where were imprisoned the souls God sends neither to heaven nor hell, because He has His designs to work out upon them.

One day this fine house, without apparent cause, trembled to its foundations, groaned and cracked ominously; the terrified occupants thought it was an earthquake and dashed out into the garden. But everything was peaceful above and below; the fountain went on playing at the street corner, a bird continued its song in the highest branches of the tallest tree.

The accident was plainly local, coming from some secret, unsuspected, unknown cause. They sent for the architect, who proceeded to examine and sound and question and cross-question the poor house, and finally announced that the subsidence could only come from an overload.

Consequently he asked leave to visit the garrets; but in this point he encountered a stubborn resistance on the part of Monsieur de Villenave.

Whence this reluctance, which however had to give way before the architect's persistency. The fact is, Monsieur de Villenave felt that his buried treasure, only the more precious to his heart because he hardly knew himself what it contained, ran no small risk from this visitation.

Yes, in the centre compartment alone there were found to be twelve hundred folios weighing nearly eight thousand pounds. Alas! these twelve hundred folios, which had made the building yield and threatened to bring it to the ground, had to be sold. The painful operation took place in 1822, and in 1826, the year when I came to know Monsieur de Villenave, he had not yet entirely got over the agony of it, and many a sigh, whereof his family could divine no sufficient reason, went after his dear folios, collected so carefully and laboriously, and now, like children driven from the paternal roof, orphaned, vagabond, scattered over the face of the earth.

I have said already how good and kind and hospitable the household in the Rue de Vaugirard was to me,—on the part of Madame de Villenave, because she was naturally affectionate, on the part of Madame de Waldor, because a poetess herself, she had a kindly feeling towards poets, on the part of Théodore de Villenave, because we were both of the same age, and an age when there is an instinctive desire to give a share of one's heart in return for a share of someone else's.

Last but not least on the part of Monsieur de Villenave, because, without being a collector of autographs, I yet owned, thanks to my father's portfolio of despatches and other military documents, a collection of autographs of no little interest. Indeed my father, having held from 1791 to 1800 high posts in the army, having been three times General Commanding-in-Chief, had been in correspondence with all the great personages who had played a part in history during those years.

The most interesting autographs belonging to this correspondence were those of General Buonaparte. Napoleon did not long retain this Italianized form of the name. Within three months of the 13th Vendémiaire he adopts the more French spelling Bonaparte, and so signs himself. Now, in this short interval my father had received five or six letters from the young General of the Interior,—such was the title he assumed after the 13th Vendémiaire.

One of these signatures I presented to Monsieur de Villenave, supplemented by an autograph of Saint-George and one of the Maréchal de Richeheu. Thanks to this sacrifice, which was no sacrifice to me, but rather a pleasure, I secured my entreé to the second floor.

Little by little I reached such a footing in the household that Françoise no longer troubled to announce me to Monsieur de Villenave, and I marched upstairs unattended. I would knock at the door, open it at the word "Come in!" and was nearly always well received.

I say nearly always, because great passions have of course their hours of storm and stress. Take the case of a collector of autographs who has marked down a precious signature, such a one as Robespierre's, who has left only three or four, or Molière's, who has left only one or two, or Shakespeare's, who I believe has left none at all; now, just as he is on the point of putting his hand on this unique or all but unique signature, the said signature escapes him by some accident and falls to a rival collector,—