Werewolf of Paris (22 page)

But it was only when the morning papers came out with another horrible and gory crime that Aymar felt better. They hadn't killed Bertrand. Bertrand was still alive. Witness this:

“In the rue de Budapest, lived La Belle Normande, so-called, or rather so self-dubbed, in order to attract customers from that province, an honest prostitute, highly respected in her own quarter, if nowhere else. Last night a young man of prepossessing exterior, in the uniform of the Garde Nationale, so the concierge states, came home with La Belle Normande. The two retired and were not heard of again until his handiwork came to light. This morning La Belle Normande requires a successor to the affection of her numerous countrymen in Paris. She, herself, is dead. Slashed by a rough, coarse instrument. Literally ripped apart. So she was found, lying in a pool of blood, on the floor of her room. Nothing seems to have been stolen. Has the London Jack the Ripper crossed the Channel? The police are combing the battalions of the Garde.”

The nature of the deed betrayed the real culprit. So Bertrand was in the National Guard. Why, of course. Every young man was there.

*
The Société impériale zoölogique d'acelimatation.

*
It was this M Giraudeau who achieved a species of notoriety during the famine, when cheese was absolutely unprocurable for love or money, by mounting a small slice of fromage de Brie on a gold scarfpin.

*
Here as everywhere one must note the trail of business. As the Société of the Jardin d'Acclimatation found it more and more difficult to secure food for the beasts in its care, they were sold to enterprising butchers and fine restaurants who could, as a result, offer, though of course at enormous prices, such rare meats and fowl as cassowary, ostrich, dingo, tapir, kangaroo, etc. Of interest is the sale of the two elephants, Castor and Pollux, who went to the wealthy butcher Deboos for 27,000 francs. These ponderous beasts, for twenty-five years adored by the children of Paris who had ridden on their backs at 50 centimes a ride, went to grace the platters of the Jockey Club and other eating places for the rich. The two elephants, facing their doom, were nonplussed. Having been subjected to nothing but kindness all their lives, they could not suspect anything but kindness in the motives and actions of those who now led them into the slaughterhouse. There was some discussion as to how the killing could best be done. Finally, a powerful fellow swung an enormous mallet with all the might of his bulky muscles. The heavy wood crashed into the forehead of one of the elephants. The beast swayed, while blood spurted from a great dent in his brow. He looked puzzled for a moment, but only for a moment, and then he regained his lifelong assurance that only caresses and food emanated from the two-legged animal. Eventually a sharpshooter was employed to kill the brutes with well-placed bullets. The meat sold for upwards of 142 francs a pound.

Chapter Twelve

A
ymar had deduced correctly. Bertrand was in the National Guard. Where else should a young man be, who was in Paris during the siege, but in the National Guard, where he was sure of his daily solde? The workshops were empty, there was not a job to be had, but no man need worry with the National Guard ready to take on anybody who was willing to sign his name. As to actual service, that was another matter. When it was decreed that the soldiers were to elect their own officers, discipline was done for, since the officers were for a large part more interested in pleasing their men and in conserving their offices than in planning an effective resistance against the Prussians.

Bertrand, having soon exhausted his money in a round of debauches in search of a repetition of the pleasure he had had with Thérèse, was easily persuaded by a chance acquaintance to join the National Guard, which he did under a very slightly altered name, which explains why Aymar could not find him on the registers.

In the turmoil of that period there was not much time for clerks to make investigations. Many men enrolled in several battalions under different names, and collected so much more pay. Only a stupid few neglected to have wives and children and thus lost the increases which went with a family to support. The elected officers, too, were willing to plug their lists, and receive pay for a thousand men when they could muster only eight hundred, pocketing the difference as well-merited earnings for their astuteness.

But it is not right to demand virtues from the poor who must starve to practice them. It would be better to ask what the rich of Paris were doing. No doubt about it, they were doing their share of patriotic work and being well rewarded for it as the rich generally are.

Bertrand, in these days, was hard pressed to satisfy that hidden appetite which he had only recently come to understand clearly. But now fully aware of the reverse side of his nature, he regulated his life so as to satisfy this need without endangering his safety. He rented a cheap basement room, far in the rear of a house. A window, which he could leave open, allowed him to escape and return unnoticed at night. During the day he locked the window carefully, going to the trouble of purchasing and affixing a new lock. He did the same for his door and thus guarded himself from any possible intrusion by the concierge, a busybody who wanted to mother him, look after his room and mend his clothing.

He knew when an attack was coming on. During the day he would have no appetite. It was particularly the thought of bread and butter that nauseated him. In the evening he would feel tense and both tired and sleepless. Then he would arrange his window and lock his door, and having taken his precautions, he would lie down. Frequently he would wake in the morning, in bed, with no recollection of what had happened at night. Only a wretched stiffness in his neck, a lassitude in his limbs that could come from nothing but miles of running, scratches on his hands and feet, and an acrid taste in his mouth argued that he had spent the night elsewhere. On one such occasion, however, full conviction awaited him when he rose. Under his bed he caught a flash of white. It was a human forearm! A man's. The fingers were clutched tightly into a fist. Hair, as if torn from a fur coat, protruded from the interstices between the fingers.

He racked his brain. Where? Whom? Evidently a man with a fur coat. Vague pictures of himself leaping gleefully through snow and slush, with a wind laden with icy crystals sweeping through the deserted streets of night, moaning among the chimney tops, and catching the breath from one's lungs at turnings, came back to him. But a man with a fur coat? He couldn't remember any man with a fur coat.

He did, however, recall that as a concession to his nature he had followed a late funeral to the Cimetière Montparnasse. It was a dreary cold day, heavily clouded, with the feel of snow in the air. The shivering mourners trudged behind and Bertrand marched with them. The relatives and friends did not bother about the young man in the uniform of the National Guard, who seemed to be mourning in his own quiet way. At such moments one respects the grief of others and is satisfied with any mental excuse: a café friend, one to whom the deceased did a kind turn once upon a time, and so forth. It even added a glamor to Bertrand. A glamor which was heightened by his shyness, by his rapid withdrawal when the ceremony was over.

Only one old man had spoken to Bertrand. He did not interrogate Bertrand much. He seemed more anxious to do the talking himself.

“Are you a friend of Madame or of Blaise?” was his only question, but this was but a precaution, for when Bertrand answered by chance, “Of Blaise,” the man continued at once:

“A scholar, if ever there was one. The kindest man you ever met. God only knows what ever led him to marry such a young girl, when he was nearly fifty! And I warned him too: Blaise, I said, again and again, you're an old fool. A young and lively girl like that will kill an old fellow like you. She'll suck the life-blood out of you. You won't be able to stand the pace. But he was bent on it. She had him bewitched.—Still, I never thought that the end was to come so soon. Barely three months of married life.

“And you know,” the old man continued, sinking his voice to a confidential tone, “there is something about this that I don't like. Two days ago, he was in excellent health. I saw him myself, and spoke to him, too. The next day dead and the next buried. Why this unseemly haste? And as for the widow, she seems more concerned about striking an elegant pose of grief than genuinely indulging in her sorrow. Ah, well. Blaise, my old friend, it will be a long time before I forget you.”

When Bertrand had recalled this conversation, all the other details of the night came back to him. The open pit, which because of the late burial had been left unfilled, the coffin, which now was covered with a thin layer of earth and snow. And then the horrible fight with a corpse recovering from a heavy drug!

And then he understood something else. Not fur from a coat, but
his own
fur!
Those grayish and brownish hairs were his own! Then it was not just an illusion that he changed; it was not a mere alteration of the desires of his muscles, but a real transformation!

Could one believe that? How, with paws, could he have pried off a heavy coffin lid?

This was a point on which he would have liked to assure himself, but a decision to take note of the matter on the next occasion was of little avail. Even when he awoke outside, and found himself lying beside a new grave or beside someone whom he had evidently attacked in the street, he could not recall whether he had been a beast or only a man acting like a beast. Apparently, on these excursions, he was incapable of rational, human thoughts, but not for all that devoid of the cunning necessary to the accomplishment of his purposes.

When he had first come to Paris and still had remnants of the money taken from Jacques, he had frequented the maisons tolérées. But he soon had to abandon this form of amusement, for the girls of Paris were experienced in their line and, like barbers, charged exorbitantly for every deviation from the normal, for every added attraction.

On the slender pay of a soldier, Bertrand could not afford expensive amusements. He sought in the streets for cheaper material. Occasionally he was successful, more often not. Then bursting with a sullen rage he would deceive a woman of the streets with grand promises. These amorous exploits frequently ended in murder. This was especially the case when it became impossible to find fresh graves to despoil.

Of his life as a soldier there is little to be said. The military annals of the National Guard are an empty book. Bertrand saw little fighting. He paraded frequently, he saw festivities, he listened to much talk on this and that plan to save Paris.

He made few friends of his comrades. In the late afternoon when his duties were finished, he generally went to a canteen, sipped a glass of wine and ruminated morosely about his disease.

One canteen to which he was accustomed to go was especially favored by the soldiers, not so much for its wines as for a young girl who donated several hours of service to it, almost every afternoon. She was of more than human beauty. She was slight of stature and could not have been over seventeen; within these limits, her physique was of that perfect variety which transcends clothes, and would have looked as graceful and strong draped in the blanket of a savage as she did in her expensive clothes.

Her dusky face was a perpetual delight, for a permanent smile transfigured it and revealed teeth whose whiteness was flawless. Her quick black eyes wandered from man to man and she had a pleasant word and laugh for all. She was Mlle Sophie de Blumenberg, daughter of the famous banker.

Many of the men, particularly the officers, of course, made attempts to draw her into something more than mere banter, but she would not allow herself to be led astray. When her coach drove up and the footman descended to open the door, she slipped out of her apron, took off her military cap, wrapped herself in her furs, waved her muffin a gesture of good-bye and was off.

Frequently an officer, recognizable by his gaudy uniform as a military person of importance, and by some actually known to be Captain Barral de Montfort, appeared to escort Mlle Sophie. They were a distinguished pair. He, perfect in his smart, military bearing, she, in her exotic type of beauty.

One envies such people, but in the same breath one wishes heaped upon their heads all the joys that life can offer and yet so insistently refuses to most of us. For such people seem as if selected by nature to be showered with the best gifts.

She, herself, wanted of life an endless succession of new wonders, new pleasures and surprises. And indeed, all her life had been such a succession for her. And she had that infinite capacity to enjoy, without which a princess must remain unhappy even in the finest palace of the world.

During their drives together, she took pleasure in teasing Barral. She told him of how all the men adored her. She described some of them. Insisted upon their handsome physique. Declared they would outshine Barral, if they were permitted to wear his bright blue uniform with its gold braid adornments.

Seeing that she was pleased if he appeared annoyed and jealous, he did his best to frown and find angry words to say to her. Mme Hertzog, Sophie's Aunt Louise, who tried to be present as often as she could in order to chaperon, remained frozen and indignant during these playful quarrels, which she found in very poor taste indeed. She found, in fact, the whole canteen business highly disgraceful for a daughter of the aristocracy, and could not approve of a patriotism carried to such excess. Such patriotism, she correctly divined, was a mere excuse for looseness of conduct.

But Baron de Blumenberg was incapable of refusing anything to his daughter, his only child. Furthermore, a display of patriotism was always a good business policy. He had been patriotic under the Empire, and was patriotic again under the government of September Fourth. He would even make a gesture of patriotism to the Commune. Good business demanded as much.

He had contributed a large sum of money to the maintenance of the canteens, but the personal appearance of his daughter was an even more effective gesture. Besides, the daughters and wives of the best families of Paris were engaged either in canteen work or in nursing.