The childhood of the Abbé Rosselot is as secret as his origin, and no man
may know whether Belfort or Bavaria smiled upon his innocence. A like
mystery enshrouds his early manhood, and the malice of his foes, who are
legion, denounces him for a Jesuit of Innsbruck. But since he has lived
within the eye of the world his villainies have been revealed as clearly
as his attainments, and history provides him no other rival in the
corruption of youth than the infamous Thwackum.
It is not every scholar's ambition to teach the elements, and Rosselot
adopted his modest calling as a cloak of crime. No sooner was he installed
in a mansion than he became the mansion's master, and henceforth he ruled
his employer's domain with the tyrannical severity of a Grand Inquisitor.
His soul wrapped in the triple brass of arrogance, he even dared to lay
his hands upon food before his betters were served; and presently,
emboldened by success, he would order the dinners, reproach the cook with
a too lavish use of condiments, and descend with insolent expostulation
into the kitchen. In a week he had opened the cupboards upon a dozen
skeletons, and made them rattle their rickety bones up and down the
draughty staircases, until the inmates shivered with horror and the
terrified neighbours fled the haunted castle as a lazar-house. Once in
possession of a family secret, he felt himself secure, and henceforth he
was free to browbeat his employer and to flog his pupil to the
satisfaction of his waspish nature. Moreover, he was endowed with all the
insight and effrontery of a trained journalist. So sedulous was he in his
search after the truth, that neither man nor woman could deny him
confidence. And, as vinegar flowed in his veins for blood, it was his
merry sport to set wife against husband and children against father. Not
even were the servants safe from his watchful inquiry, and housemaids and
governesses alike entrusted their hopes and fears to his malicious
keeping. And when the house had retired to rest, with what a sinister
delight did he chuckle over the frailties and infamies, a guilty knowledge
of which he had dragged from many an unwilling sinner! To oust him, when
installed, was a plain impossibility, for this wringer of hearts was only
too glib in the surrender of another's scandal; and as he accepted the
last scurrility with Christian resignation, his unfortunate employer could
but strengthen his vocabulary and patiently endure the presence of this
smiling, demoniacal tutor.
But a too villainous curiosity was not the Abbé's capital sin.
Not only did he entertain his leisure with wrecking the happiness of a
united family, but he was an enemy open and declared of France. It was his
amiable pastime at the dinner-table, when he had first helped himself to
such delicacies as tempted his dainty palate, to pronounce a pompous
eulogy upon the German Emperor. France, he would say with an exultant
smile, is a pays pourri, which exists merely to be the football of
Prussia. She has but one hope of salvation—still the monster speaks—and
that is to fall into the benign occupation of a vigorous race. Once upon a
time—the infamy is scarce credible—he was conducting his young
charges past a town-hall, over the lintel of whose door glittered those
proud initials 'R. F.' 'What do they stand for?' asked this demon Barlow.
And when the patriotic Tommy hesitated for an answer, the preceptor
exclaimed with ineffable contempt, 'Race de fous'! It is no wonder, then,
that this foe of his fatherland feared to receive a letter openly
addressed; rather he would slink out under cover of night and seek his
correspondence at the poste restante, like a guilty lover or a British
tourist.
The Château de Presles was built for his reception. It was haunted by a
secret, which none dare murmur in the remotest garret. There was no more
than a whisper of murder in the air, but the Marquis shuddered when his
wife's eye frowned upon him. True, the miserable Menaldo had disappeared
from his seminary ten years since, but threats of disclosure were uttered
continually, and respectability might only be purchased by a profound
silence. Here was the Abbé's most splendid opportunity, and he seized it
with all the eagerness of a greedy temperament. The Marquise, a wealthy
peasant, who was rather at home on the wild hill-side than in her stately
castle, became an instant prey to his devilish intrigue. The governess, an
antic old maid of fifty-seven, whose conversation was designed to bring a
blush to the cheek of the most hardened dragoon, was immediately on terms
of so frank an intimacy that she flung bread pellets at him across the
table, and joyously proposed, if we may believe the priest on his oath, to
set up housekeeping with him, that they might save expense. Two
high-spirited boys were always at hand to encourage his taste for
flogging, and had it not been for the Marquis, the Abbé's cup would have
been full to overflowing. But the Marquis loved not the lean, ogling
instructor of his sons, and presently began to assail him with all the
abuse of which he was master. He charged the Abbé with unspeakable
villainy; salop and saligaud were the terms in which he would habitually
refer to him. He knew the rascal for a spy, and no modesty restrained him
from proclaiming his knowledge. But whatever insults were thrown at the
Abbé he received with a grin complacent as Shylock's, for was he not
conscious that when he liked the pound of flesh was his own!
With a fiend's duplicity he laid his plans of ruin and death. The
Marquise, swayed to his will, received him secretly in the blue room
(whose very colour suggests a guilty intrigue), though never, upon the
oath of an Abbé, when the key was turned in the lock. A journey to
Switzerland had freed him from the haunting suspicion of the Marquis, and
at last he might compel the wife to denounce her husband as a murderer.
The terrified woman drew the indictment at the Abbé's dictation, and when
her husband returned to St. Amand he was instantly thrust into prison.
Nothing remained but to cajole the sons into an expressed hatred of their
father, and the last enormity was committed by a masterpiece of cunning.
'Your father's one chance of escape,' argued this villain in a cassock,
'is to be proved an inhuman ruffian. Swear that he beat you unmercifully
and you will save him from the guillotine.' All the dupes learned their
lesson with a certainty which reflects infinite credit upon the Abbé's
method of instruction.
For once in his life the Abbé had been moved by greed as well as by
villainy. His early exploits had no worse motive than the satisfaction of
an inhuman lust for cruelty and destruction. But the Marquise was rich,
and when once her husband's head were off, might not the Abbé reap his
share of the gathered harvest? The stakes were high, but the game was
worth the playing, and Rosselot played it with spirit and energy unto the
last card. His appearance in court is ever memorable, and as his ferret
eyes glinted through glass at the President, he seemed the villain of some
Middle Age Romance. His head, poised upon a lean, bony frame, was
embellished with a nose thin and sharp as the blade of a knife; his
tightly compressed lips were an indication of the rascal's determination.
'Long as a day in Lent'—that is how a spectator described him; and
if ever a sinister nature glared through a sinister figure, the Abbé's
character was revealed before he parted his lips in speech. Unmoved he
stood and immovable; he treated the imprecations of the Marquis with a
cold disdain; as the burden of proof grew heavy on his back, he shrugged
his shoulders in weary indifference. He told his monstrous story with a
cynical contempt, which has scarce its equal in the history of crime; and
priest, as he was, he proved that he did not yield to the Marquis himself
in the Rabelaisian amplitude of his vocabulary. He brought charges against
the weird world of Presles with an insouciance and brutality which
defeated their own aim. He described the vices of his master and the sins
of the servants in a slang which would sit more gracefully upon an idle
roysterer than upon a pious Abbé. And, his story ended, he leered at the
Court with the satisfaction of one who had discharged a fearsome duty.
But his rascality overshot its mark; the Marquise, obedient to his
priestly casuistry, displayed too fierce a zeal in the execution of his
commands. And he took to flight, hoping to lose in the larger world of
Paris the notoriety which his prowess won him among the poor despised
Berrichons. He left behind for our consolation a snatch of philosophy
which helps to explain his last and greatest achievement. 'Those who have
money exist only to be fleeced.' Thus he spake with a reckless revelation
of self. Yet the mystery of his being is still unpierced. He is traitor,
schemer, spy; but is he an Abbé? Perhaps not. At any rate, he once
attended the 'Messe des Morts,' and was heard to mumble a 'Credo,' which,
as every good Catholic remembers, has no place in that solemn service.
Printed by T. and A. CONSTABLE, Printers to His Majesty at the Edinburgh
University Press
