The World's Greatest Books - Volume 1 Part 26

Pauline Gaudin was a charming and beautiful child; her father, a baron of the empire, and an officer in the Grand Army, had been taken prisoner by the Russians in 1812, and never heard of since. Raphael was moved by the grace and innocence of the lovely human flower, that grew from a bud into an opening blossom under his care. But as he was too poor to marry her, he never made love to her.

Then, in January, 1830, he met the Countess Foedora, a brilliant, wealthy woman of society, widowed at the age of thirty, and eager to s.h.i.+ne and astonish and captivate. For her sake, Raphael had put aside his scholarly studies and engaged in money-making hack-work. But after keeping him dangling about her for some months, she had cast him off, and in his misery he had resolved to end his life. Now he had got the magic skin. What if it were true what the strange old man had said?

Should he wish to win the heart of Foedora? No! She was a woman without a heart. He would have nothing to do with women. Still, this skin!

"Measure it! Measure it!" he cried, flinging it down on the table.

"Measure what?" said Emile. "Has Taillefer's wine got into your head already?"

Raphael told them of the curiosity shop.

"That can be easily tested," said Emile, taking the skin and drawing its outline on a napkin. "Now wish, and see if it shrinks."

"I wish for six million pounds!" said Raphael.

"Hurrah!" said Emile. "And while you're about it make us all millionaires."

Taillefer's notary, Cardot, who had been gazing at Raphael during the dinner, walked across the room to him.

"My dear marquis," he said, "I've been looking for you all the evening.

Wasn't your mother a Miss O'Flaharty?"

"Yes, she was," said Raphael--"Barbara O'Flaharty."

"Well, you are the sole heir of Major O'Flaharty, who died last August at Calcutta, leaving a fortune of six millions."

"An incalculable fortune," said Emile. Raphael spread out the skin upon the napkin. He shuddered violently on seeing a slight margin between the pencil-line on the napkin and the edge of the skin.

"What's the matter?" said the notary. "He has got a fortune very cheaply."

"Hold him up," said some one. "The joy will kill him."

A ghostly whiteness spread over the face of the happy heir. He had seen Death! He stared at the shrunken skin and the merciless outline on the napkin, and a feeling of horror came over him. The whole world was his; he could have all things. But at what a cost!

"Do you wish for some asparagus, sir?" said, a waiter.

"_I wish for nothing!_" shrieked Raphael. And he fled from the banquet.

"So," he said, when he was at last alone, "in this enlightened age, when science has stripped the very stars of their secrets, here am I frightened out of my senses by an old piece of wild a.s.s's skin.

To-morrow I will have it examined by Planchette, and put an end to this mad fancy."

Planchette, the celebrated professor of mechanics, treated the thing as a joke.

"Come with me to Spieghalter," he said. "He has just built a new kind of hydraulic press which I designed."

Arrived there, Planchette asked Spieghalter to stretch the magic skin.

"Our friend," he said, "doubts if we can do it."

"You see this crank?" said Spieghalter to Raphael, pointing to the new press. "Seven turns to it, and a solid steel bar would break into thousands of pieces."

"The very thing I want," said Raphael.

Planchette put the skin between the metal plates, and, proud of his new invention, he energetically twisted the crank.

"Lie flat all of you!" shouted Spieghalter. "We're dead men."

There was an explosion, and a jet of water spurted out with terrific force. Falling on a furnace it twisted up the ma.s.s of iron as if it had been paper. The hydraulic chamber of the press had given way.

"The skin is untouched," said Planchette. "There was a flaw in the press."

"No, no!" said Spieghalter. "My press was as sound as a bell. The devil's in your skin, sir. Take it away!"

Spieghalter seized the talisman, and flung it on an anvil, and furiously belaboured it with a heavy sledgehammer. He then pitched it in a furnace, and ordered his workmen to blow the coal into a fierce white heat. At the end of ten minutes he drew it out with a pair of tongs uninjured. With a cry of horror the workmen fled from the foundry.

"I now believe in the devil," said Spieghalter.

"And I believe in G.o.d," said Planchette.

Raphael departed in a hard, bitter rage. He was resolved to fight like a man against his strange fate. He would follow the example of the former owner of the magic skin, and give himself up to study and meditation, and live his life in the tranquil acquisition of knowledge, undisturbed by pa.s.sion and desire, and l.u.s.t for power, and dominion and glory. On receiving his vast inheritance, he bought a mansion in the Rue de Varenne, and engaged a crowd of intelligent, quiet servants to wait upon him.

But his first care had been to seek out his foster-father, Jonathan, the old and devoted servitor of his family. To him he confided his dreadful secret.

"You must stand between the world and me, Jonathan," he said. "Treat me as a baby. Never ask me for orders. See that the servants feed me, and tend me, and care for me in absolute silence. Above all things, never let anyone pester me. Never let me form a wish of any kind."

For some months, the eccentric Marquis de Valentin was the talk of Paris. He lived in monastic silence and seclusion, and Jonathan never permitted any of his friends to enter the mansion. But one morning his old tutor, Porriquet, called, and Jonathan thought he might cheer his young master. He could not ask Raphael: "Do you wish to see M.

Porriquet?" But after some thought he found a way of putting the question: "M. Porriquet is here, my lord. Do you think he ought to enter?"

Raphael nodded. Porriquet was alarmed at the appearance of his pupil. He looked like a plant bleached by darkness. The fact was, Raphael had surrendered every right in life in order to live. He had despoiled his soul of all the romance that lies in a wish. The better to struggle with the cruel power that he had challenged, he had stifled his imagination.

He did not allow himself even the pleasures of fancy, lest they should awaken some desire. He had become an automaton.

Porriquet, unfortunately, was now an irritating old proser. He had failed in life and wanted to air all his grievances. At the end of five minutes' talk Raphael was about to wish that he would depart, when he caught sight of the magic skin hanging in a frame, with a red line drawn around it. Suppressing, with a shudder, his secret desire, he patiently bore with the old man's prolixity. Porriquet wanted very much to ask him for money, but did not like to do so, and after complaining for quite an hour or more about things in general, he rose to depart.

"Perhaps," he said, as he turned to leave the room, "I shall hear of a headmasters.h.i.+p of a good school."

"The very thing for you!" said Raphael. "I _wish_ you could get it."

Then, with a sudden cry, he looked at the frame. There was a thin white edge between the skin and the red line.

"Go, you fool!" he shouted. "I have made you a headmaster. Why didn't you ask me for an annuity of a thousand pounds instead of using up ten years of my life on a silly wish? I could have won Foedora at the price!

Conquered a kingdom!"

His lips were covered with froth, and there was a savage light in his eyes. Porriquet fled in terror. Then Raphael fell back in a chair, and wept.

"Oh, my precious life!" he sobbed. "No more kindly thoughts! No more friends.h.i.+p!"

_III.--The Agony of Death_

Raphael's condition had by now become so critical that a trip to Savoy was advised, and a few weeks later he was at Aix. One day, moving among the crowd of pleasure-seekers and invalids, a number of young men deliberately picked a quarrel with him, with the result that from one of them he received a challenge to fight a duel. Raphael did his utmost to persuade the other to apologise, even going to the extent of informing him of the terrible powers he possessed. Failing in his object, the fatal morning came round, and the unfortunate individual was shot through the heart. Not heeding the fallen man, Raphael hurriedly glanced at the skin to see what another man's life had cost him. The talisman had shrunk to the size of a small oak-leaf.