On arriving near him, it halted and remained more motionless than the statue of Cardinal Bertrand.
Meanwhile, it riveted upon Phoebus two intent eyes, full of that vague light which issues in the night time from the pupils of a cat.
The captain was brave, and would have cared very little for a highwayman, with a rapier in his hand.
But this walking statue, this petrified man, froze his blood.
There were then in circulation, strange stories of a surly monk, a nocturnal prowler about the streets of Paris, and they recurred confusedly to his memory.
He remained for several minutes in stupefaction, and finally broke the silence with a forced laugh.
“Monsieur, if you are a robber, as I hope you are, you produce upon me the effect of a heron attacking a nutshell.
I am the son of a ruined family, my dear fellow.
Try your hand near by here.
In the chapel of this college there is some wood of the true cross set in silver.”
The hand of the shadow emerged from beneath its mantle and descended upon the arm of Phoebus with the grip of an eagle’s talon; at the same time the shadow spoke,—
“Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers!”
“What, the devil!” said Phoebus, “you know my name!”
“I know not your name alone,” continued the man in the mantle, with his sepulchral voice. “You have a rendezvous this evening.”
“Yes,” replied Phoebus in amazement.
“At seven o’clock.”
“In a quarter of an hour.”
“At la Falourdel’s.”
“Precisely.”
“The lewd hag of the Pont Saint-Michel.”
“Of Saint Michel the archangel, as the Pater Noster saith.”
“Impious wretch!” muttered the spectre. “With a woman?”
“Confiteor,—I confess—.”
“Who is called—?”
“La Smeralda,” said Phoebus, gayly.
All his heedlessness had gradually returned.
At this name, the shadow’s grasp shook the arm of Phoebus in a fury.
“Captain Phoebus de Chateaupers, thou liest!”
Any one who could have beheld at that moment the captain’s inflamed countenance, his leap backwards, so violent that he disengaged himself from the grip which held him, the proud air with which he clapped his hand on his swordhilt, and, in the presence of this wrath the gloomy immobility of the man in the cloak,—any one who could have beheld this would have been frightened.
There was in it a touch of the combat of Don Juan and the statue.
“Christ and Satan!” exclaimed the captain. “That is a word which rarely strikes the ear of a Chateaupers!
Thou wilt not dare repeat it.”
“Thou liest!” said the shadow coldly.
The captain gnashed his teeth.
Surly monk, phantom, superstitions,—he had forgotten all at that moment.
He no longer beheld anything but a man, and an insult.
“Ah! this is well!” he stammered, in a voice stifled with rage.
He drew his sword, then stammering, for anger as well as fear makes a man tremble: “Here!
On the spot!
Come on!
Swords!
Swords!
Blood on the pavement!”
But the other never stirred.
When he beheld his adversary on guard and ready to parry,—
“Captain Phoebus,” he said, and his tone vibrated with bitterness, “you forget your appointment.”
The rages of men like Phoebus are milk-soups, whose ebullition is calmed by a drop of cold water.
This simple remark caused the sword which glittered in the captain’s hand to be lowered.
“Captain,” pursued the man, “to-morrow, the day after to-morrow, a month hence, ten years hence, you will find me ready to cut your throat; but go first to your rendezvous.”
“In sooth,” said Phoebus, as though seeking to capitulate with himself, “these are two charming things to be encountered in a rendezvous,—a sword and a wench; but I do not see why I should miss the one for the sake of the other, when I can have both.”