Here for the first time I discovered the purpose for which I had been brought to the place. A man lay dead upon the flags of the gallery, and it was clear that he had died by a bullet from the pistol which was flung down at his side.
Thousands of men had I seen die since we crossed the River Niemen, yet the sight of this mere youth lying dead upon the flags afflicted me strangely. Perchance it was the great cold hall, or the dim light which filtered through its heavy windows, or the silence of that immense house and all the suggestions of mystery which attended it. Be it as it may, I had less than my usual resource when I knelt by the young man's side and made that brief examination which quickly convinced me that he was dead. The dandy, meanwhile, stood near by taking prodigious pinches of snuff from a box edged with diamonds. His unconcern was remarkable. I could make nothing of such a picture.
"Who is this youth?" I asked him.
He shrugged his shoulders and took another pinch of the snuff.
"One of your own countrymen, as I say—an artist from Fréjus who is in the service of my lord, the prince."
"How did he die, then?"
The dandy averted his eyes. Then he said:
"I returned from the great square ten minutes ago and found him here. You can see as well as I that he shot himself."
"That is not true," I rejoined, looking at him sternly. "Men do not shoot themselves in the middle of the back!"
He was still unconcerned.
"Very well, then," he retorted; "someone must have shot him." And almost upon the words he turned as white as a sheet.
"Listen," he cried in a loud whisper; "did you not hear them?"
I listened and certainly heard the sound of voices.
It came through an open door at the far end of the gallery and rose in a sharp crescendo, which seemed to say that men were quarrelling.
"Who is in the house?" I asked the fellow.
"I do not know," he said gravely enough. "There should be no one here but ourselves. Perhaps you will be good enough to see. You are a soldier; it is your business."
I laughed at his impudence, and having looked to the priming of my pistol, I caught him suddenly by the arm and pushed him on ahead of me. Justly or not, it had flashed upon me that this might be a trap. Yet why it should be so or what it had to do with a surgeon-major of the Guards I knew no more than the dead.
"We will go together," said I; and so I pushed him down the corridor.
My presence seemed to give him courage. He entered the room with me, and before a man could have counted three he fell headlong with a great gash in his throat that all the surgeons in the French army could not have stitched up.
This was a memorable scene, but I was to witness many a one like it in those days of rapine and of pillage to come.
We had entered a lofty room, the furniture of which would not have been out of place in the Emperor's palace at Paris. Most of it, indeed, was French, and some of the cabinets were such as you may see to this day both in the Tuileries and at Fontainebleau. So much I observed at a glance, but infinitely of more import at the moment was the tenants of the room. Three greater ruffians I have never seen in any city of Europe; neither men so dirty and ill-kempt nor so ferocious in their mien. All wore ragged sheepskins and had their legs bare at the knee. They were armed with knives and bludgeons, and two of them carried torches in their hands. Instantly I saw that these were three of the convicts whom the governor had released. They had come to sack the house, and they would have killed any who opposed them as a butcher kills a sheep. But for the dead man at my feet, I could have laughed aloud at their predicament when they suddenly realised that a soldier and not a civilian must now be dealt with. It was just as though their valour went ebbing away in a torrent.
I struck the first man down with the butt end of my pistol, and, fearing the effect of a shot, drew my sword and made for the others who held the torches. They fled headlong, slamming the heavy door at the far end of the room behind them—and there was I alone with the dead, and the house had fallen again to the silence of a tomb.
III
I stooped over the man I had struck down, and found him breathing stertorously but still alive. The lackey, however, was quite dead, and his blood had made a great pool upon the rich Eastern carpet of the salon.
My first impulse was to go to the windows and open the heavy shutters; and when this was done I found myself looking out upon a pretty garden in the Italian fashion. It was surrounded by high walls on three sides, and seemed as void of humanity as the house. The salon itself stood at a considerable height from the ground, and although there was a wide balcony before the windows, I perceived no possible means of escape thereby.
This will tell you that I now had a considerable apprehension both of the deserted house and of the adventure which had befallen me. Not only did I blame my own folly for listening to the servant in the first instance—that was bad enough—but upon it there came a desire to return to my comrades, which was almost an obsession. There I stood upon the balcony listening to the rolling of the drums and the blare of the bugles, and yet I might have been a thousand leagues from friends and comrades. Moreover, it was evident that I had not seen the last of the assassins, and that they would return.
Such was the situation at a moment when I realised that escape by the balcony was impossible. Returning to the room, its beauty and riches stood fully revealed by the warm sunlight, and they recalled to me the tales of Moscow's wealth which we had heard directly we entered Russia. The Grand Army, I said, would be well occupied for many days to come in an employment it had always found congenial. Vases of the rarest porcelain, statues from Italy, pictures and furniture from my own France, gems in gold and stones most precious were the common ornaments of this magnificent apartment. Here and there an empty cabinet seemed to say that some attempt had been made already to remove these treasures, and that the entry of our troops had disturbed the robbers. What remained, however, would have been riches to a prince, and it would have been possible for me to have put a fortune into my wallet that very hour.
Already it seemed to me that I should have a difficulty in finding my way out of the house. The idea had been in my mind when I stood upon the balcony and contemplated the solitude and the security of the garden below. There I had listened to the rolling music of the bands, the blare of bugles, and the tramping of many thousands of exulting soldiers; but all sounds were lost when I returned to the great hall and stood alone with the dead.
Who was this youth to whom I had been called?
I bent over him and discovered such a face as one might find in the picture of an Italian master. The lad would have been about one and twenty, and no woman's hair could have been finer than his. Such a skin I had rarely seen; the face might have been chiselled from the purest marble; the eyes were open and blue as the sea by which I imagined this young fellow had lived. There was firmness in the chin, and a contour of neck and shoulders which even a physician could admire.
His clothes, I observed, were well chosen and made of him a man of some taste. He wore breeches of black velvet and a shirt of the finest cambric, open at the neck. His shoes had jewelled buckles, and his stockings were of silk. Who, then, was the lad, and why had the lackey killed him? That was a question I meant to answer when I had some of my comrades with me. It remained to escape from this house of mystery as quickly as might be.
I passed down the staircase and came to an ante-room with a vast door at the end of it. It was heavily bolted, and the keys of it were gone. So much I had expected, and yet it seemed that where the assassins had gone there might I follow. Ridiculous to be a prisoner of a house from within, and of such a house, when there must be half a dozen doors that gave upon the streets about it. And yet I could find none of them that was not locked and barred as the chief door I have named, while every window upon