I once spoke to my aunt of the vow I had taken, the solemn promise I had made to myself that I would discover the murderer of my father, and take vengeance upon him, and she laid her hand upon my mouth.She was a pious woman, and she repeated the words of the gospel: "Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord." Then she added: "We must leave the punishment of the crime to Him; His will is hidden from us.Remember the divine precept and promise, 'Forgive and you shall be forgiven.' Never say: 'An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth.' Ah, no; drive this enmity out of your heart, Cornelis;yes, even this." And there were tears in her eyes.
My poor aunt! She thought me made of sterner stuff than I really was.There was no need of her advice to prevent my being consumed by the desire for vengeance which had been the fixed star of my early youth, the blood-colored beacon aflame in my night.Ah! the resolutions of boyhood, the "oaths of Hannibal" taken to ourselves, the dream of devoting all our strength to one single and unchanging aim--life sweeps all that away, together with our generous illusions, ardent enthusiasm, and noble hopes.What a difference there is--what a falling off--between the boy of fifteen, unhappy indeed, but so bold and proud in 1870, and the young man of eight years later, in 1878! And to think, only to think, that but for chance occurrences, impossible to foresee, I should still be, at this hour, the young man whose portrait hangs upon the wall above the table at which I am writing.Of a surety, the visitors to the Salon of that year (1878) who looked at this portrait among so many others, had no suspicion that it represented the son of a father who had come to so tragic an end.And I, when I look at that commonplace image of an ordinary Parisian, with eyes unlit by any fire or force of will, complexion paled by the fatigues of fashion, hair cut in the mode of the day, strictly correct dress and attitude, I am astonished to think that I could have lived as Iactually did live at that period.Between the misfortunes that saddened my childhood, and those of quite recent date which have finally laid waste my life, the course of my existence was colorless, monotonous, vulgar, just like that of anybody else.Ishall merely note the stages of it.
In the second half of 1870, the Franco-Prussian war takes place.
The invasion finds me at Compiegne, where I am passing my holidays with my aunt.My stepfather and my mother remain in Paris during the siege.I go on with my studies under the tuition of an old priest belonging to the little town, who prepared my father for his first communion.In the autumn of 1871 I return to Versailles; in August, 1873, I take my bachelor's degree, and then I do my one year's voluntary service in the army at Angers under the easiest possible conditions.My colonel was the father of my old schoolfellow, Rocquin.In 1874 I am set free from tutelage by my stepfather's advice.This was the moment at which my task was to have been begun, the time appointed with my own soul; yet, four years afterwards, in 1878, not only was the vengeance that had been the tragic romance, and, so to speak, the religion of my childhood, unfulfilled, but I did not trouble myself about it.
I was cruelly ashamed of my indifference when I thought about it;but I am now satisfied that it was not so much the result of weakness of character as of causes apart from myself which would have acted in the same way upon any young man placed in my situation.From the first, and when I faced my task of vengeance, an insurmountable obstacle arose before me.It is equally easy and sublime to strike an attitude and exclaim: "I swear that I will never rest until I have punished the guilty one." In reality, one never acts except in detail, and what could I do? I had to proceed in the same way as justice had proceeded, to reopen the inquiry which had been pushed to its extremity without any result.
I began with the Judge of Instruction,* who had had the carriage of the matter, and who was now a Counsellor of the Court.He was a man of fifty, very quiet and plain in his way, and he lived in the Ile de Paris, on the first floor of an ancient house, from whose windows he could see Notre Dame, primitive Paris, and the Seine, which is as narrow as a canal at that place.
The translator renders literally those terms and phrases relating to the French criminal law and procedure which have no analogous expression in English.
M.Massol, so he was named, was quite willing to resume with me the analysis of the data which had been furnished by the Instruction.
No doubt existed either as to the personality of the assassin, or the hour at which the crime was committed.My father had been killed between two and three o'clock in the day, without a struggle, by that tall, broad-shouldered personage whose extraordinary disguise indicated, according to the magistrate, "an amateur." Excess of complication is always an imprudence, for it multiplies the chances of failure.Had the assassin dyed his skin and worn a wig because my father knew him by sight?
