Page:Dumas - Tales of Strange adventure (Methuen, 1907).djvu/79

Rh inches of steel or an ounce of lead weigh in the scales of human destiny.

Chance, Providence, Fate,—the world will grow grey pondering the sphinx-like riddle of these three words.

One day I mean to return to The Hague, only to see once more that bloodstained shirt, that pistol and pistol bullet.

But it was a quarter to eleven, I had only a few minutes to call my own. I asked to see my Siren, and was taken to case No. 449. This contained three monsters,—a Faun, a Vampire and a Siren. It was the Siren I was after, and I left Vampire and Faun unregarded.

She was mummified and pretty much the colour of a Carib's head. Her eyes were shut, the nose flattened to the face; the lips stuck to the teeth, which were yellow with time. The bosom could be made out, though fallen away, and a few short hairs bristled on the head. The lower part of the body ended duly in a fish's tail. There was nothing to be said; it was a Siren sure enough.

On being questioned, my cicerone then told the story of the physician Dimas Bosque, the Jesuit Father, the Viceroy of Manara and the Dutch Resident, to the same effect as I have already recounted.

"It appears," he said to me when he had done," that you are anxious for information about animals of the sort."

I must say I thought my guide's language a trifle impertinent,—classifying with animals a creature boasting of a woman's head, a woman's hands and a woman's breasts. However, as I had no time to argue the point, I merely replied:

"Most anxious, I assure you, and if you could give me. . . ."

"Oh! I am not exactly in a position—but I can tell you where to learn all details."

"Where is that? quick, tell me."

"At Monnikendam."

"Pray, what is Monnikendam?"

"It is a small place two leagues from Amsterdam, at the head of a small inlet of the Zuider Zee."

"And I shall obtain information there about the Sirens?"

"Yes, certainly, about the Sirens; and about the Mermaids too,—which is even more curious."

"Then there is one in the Museum at Monnikendam?"

"No, but there is one in the church-yard; you will see her husband and her children, which will be quite as amusing."

"She was married then, she has had children,—your mermaid?"

"Yes, she was both wife and mother. True, her children deny her; but there, her husband will tell you the whole story,"

"Does he speak French?"

"Oh! he speaks all languages. He is an old sea-dog."

"And you say his name is?"

"Père Olifus."

"Where shall I find him?"

"Perhaps at Amsterdam itself; he owns a boat in which he carries passengers from Amsterdam to Monnikendam. If you do not come across him at the former you will at the latter place, where his daughter Margaret keeps the Inn of the Bonhomme Tropique."

"Père Olifus is his name, you say?"

"Père Olifus, yes."

"Very good,"—and casting a last look at the Siren, of which Biard made a sketch, we leapt into our hackney-coach, shouting to the man to drive his hardest for the railway station.

CHAPTER IV

THE BONHOMME TROPIQUE.

OLLAND is the country par excellence for railways. From The Hague to Amsterdam the Dutch engineers have not had a single ravine to fill in, not so much as a nutshell to cut through. Everywhere the country is the same,—a vast meadow intersected by watercourses, diversified with clumps of trees of the most brillantbrilliant [sic] green, sheep buried in their fleeces, cows wearing topcoats.

Nothing can be more scrupulously exact than the landscapes of the Dutch masters. When you have seen Hobbema and Paul Potter, you have seen Holland. When you have seen Teniers and Terburg, you have seen the Dutch. Nevertheless all who have not been to Holland should go. Even after Hobbema and Paul Potter, Holland is a fine country to