"Oh!" the count said energetically, "I may succumb in the contest which begins this day between myself and humanity at large, but fear nothing, my friend; I will fall nobly like a man of courage."
"I am persuaded of it, my friend. I have only a few more words to say to you. I, too, was a Dauph'yeer, and am so still. Thanks to my brethren, I gained the fortune I now possess. Take this portfolio: put round your neck this chain, from which a medallion hangs; then, when you are alone, read these instructions contained in the portfolio, and act as they prescribe. If you follow them point for point, I guarantee your success. That is the present I reserved for you, and which I would not give you till we were alone."
"O heavens!" the count said with effusion.
"Here we are at the barrier," the baron remarked, as he stopped the carriage. "It is time for us to separate. Farewell, my friend! Courage and good will! Embrace me. Above all, remember the portfolio and the medallion."
The two men remained for a long time in each other's arms. At length the baron freed himself by a vigorous effort, opened the door, and leaped out on the pavement.
"Farewell!" he cried for the last time; "Farewell, Gaëtan, remember me."
The post-chaise was bowling along the high road at full speed. Strange to say, both men muttered the same word, shaking heads with discouragement, when they found themselves alone one walking at full speed along the footpath, the other buried in the cushions.
That word was "Perhaps!"
The reason was that, despite all their efforts to deceive each other, neither of them hoped.
CHAPTER V
THE DAUPH'YEERS
Now let us quit the old world, and, taking an immense stride, transport ourselves to the new one at a single leap.
There is in America a city which possibly cannot be compared to any other in the whole world. That city is Valparaiso!
Valparaiso! The word resounds in the enchanted ear like the gentle soft notes of a love song.
A coquettish, smiling, and mad city, softly reclining like a careless Creole, round a delicious bay, at the foot of three majestic mountains, lazily bathing her rosy and dainty feet in the azure waves of the Pacific, and veiling her dreamy brow in the storm-laden clouds which escape from Cape Horn, and roll with a sinister sound round the peaks of the Cordilleras, to form a splendid glory for them.
Although built on the Chilean coast, this strange city belongs, in fact, to no country, and recognises no nationality: or to speak more correctly, it admits all into its bosom.
At Valparaiso the adventurer of every clime have given each other the meeting. All tongues are spoken there, every branch of trade is carried on. The population is the quaintest amalgam of the most eccentric personalities, who have rushed from the most remote parts of the four quarters of the old world, to attack fortune in this city, the advanced sentinel of Transatlantic civilisation, and whose occult influence governs the Hispano-American republic.
Valparaiso, like nearly all the commercial centres of South America, is a pile of shapeless dens and magnificent palaces jostling each other, and hanging in abrupt clusters on the abrupt flanks of the three mountains.
At the period the event occurred which we are about to describe, the streets were narrow, dirty, deprived of air and sun. The paving, being perfectly ignored, rendered them perfect morasses, in which the wayfarer sank to the knee when the winter's rains had loosened the soil. This rendered the use of a horse indispensable, even for the shortest passage.
Deleterious exhalations incessantly escaped from these mud holes, heightened by the filth of every description which the daily cleaning of the inhabitants accumulated, while no one dreamed of draining these permanent abodes of pernicious fevers.
At the present day, we are told, this state of things has been altered, and Valparaiso no longer resembles itself. We should like to believe it; but the carelessness of the South American, so well known to us, compels us to be very circumspect in such a matter.
In one of the dirtiest and worst-famed streets of Valparaiso was a house which we ask the reader's permission to describe in a few words.
We are compelled at the outset, to confess that if the architect intrusted with its construction had shown himself more than sober in the distribution of the ornaments, he had built it perfectly to suit the trade of the various tenants destined in future to occupy it one after the other.
It was a clay-built hovel. The façade looked upon the Street de la Merced; the opposite side had an outlook of the sea, above which it projected for a certain distance upon posts.
This house was inhabited by an innkeeper. Contrary to the European buildings, which grow smaller the higher they rise from the ground, this house grew larger; so that the upper part was lofty and well lighted, while the shop and other ground floor rooms were confined and gloomy.
The present occupier had skilfully profited by this architectural arrangement to have a room made in the wall between the first and second floors, which was reached by a turning staircase, concealed in the masonry.
This room was so built that the slightest noise in the street distinctly reached the ears of persons in it, while stifling any they might make, however loud it might be.
The worthy landlord, occupier of this house, had naturally a rather mixed custom of people of every description smugglers, rateros, rogues, and others, whose habits might bring them into unpleasant difficulties with the Chilean police; consequently, a whaleboat constantly fastened to a ring under a window opening on the sea, offered a provisional but secure shelter to the customers of the establishment whenever, by any accident, the agents of government evinced a desire to pay a domiciliary visit to his den.
This house was known and probably is still known, unless an earthquake or a fire has caused this rookery to disappear from the face of the earth of Valparaiso by the name of the Locanda del Sol.
On an iron plate suspended from a beam, and creaking with every breath of wind, there had been painted by a native artist a huge red face, surrounded by orange beams, possibly intended as an explanation of the sign to which I have alluded above.
Señor Benito Sarzuela master of the Locanda del Sol, was a tall, dry fellow with an angular face end crafty look; a mixture of the Araucano, Negro and Spaniard, whose morale responded perfectly to his physique; that is to say, he combined in himself the vices of the three races to which he belonged red, black, and white without possessing one single virtue of theirs, and that beneath the shadow of an avowed and almost honest trade he carried on clandestinely some twenty, the most innocent of which would have taken him to the presidios or galleys for life, had he been discovered.
Some two months after the events we described in a previous chapter, about eleven of the clock on a cold and misty night, Señor Benito Sarzuela was seated in melancholy mood within his bar, contemplating with mournful eye the deserted room of his establishment.
The wind blowing violently, caused the sign of the mesón to creak on its hinges with gloomy complaints, and the heavy black clouds coming from the south moved weightily athwart the sky, dropping at intervals heavy masses of rain on the ground loosened by previous storms.
"Come," the unhappy host muttered to himself with a piteous air, "there is another day which finishes as badly as the others. Sangre de Dios! For the last week I have had no luck. If it continues only a fortnight longer I shall be ruined a man."