The Erckmann-Chatrian MEGAPACK ®. Emile Erckmann
collector Van Spreckdal, a judge in the criminal court, made a strong impression on me. I could not stop myself from casting a surreptitious glance at my old worm-eaten furniture, my damp tapestries and my dusty floor. I felt humiliated by such a squalid state of affairs… But Van Spreckdal did not seem to pay any attention to these things and promptly sat down at my little table:
“Mister Venius,” he went on, “I’ve come to…”
But, just then, his eyes came to rest on the incomplete sketch.… He failed to finish his sentence. I had seated myself on the edge of the truckle bed and the sudden attention given by this person to one of my works made my heart beat faster with a feeling of apprehension that was difficult to define.
After a minute Van Spreckdal raised his head:
“Are you the author of this sketch?” he asked, now giving me his undivided attention.
“Yes, sir.”
“What are you asking for it?”
“I don’t sell my sketches… It’s the rough draft for a picture.”
“I see,” he said, lifting up the paper with the tips of his long yellow fingers. He took a magnifying glass from his waistcoat pocket and started to study the drawing in silence.
The sun’s rays were, at this time of day, falling obliquely into my garret. Van Spreckdal did not breathe a word; his big nose curved into a claw, his thick eyebrows contracted, and his protruding chin created a thousand wrinkles in his long sunken cheeks. The silence was so impenetrable that I could hear quite distinctly the plaintive buzzing of a fly caught in a spider’s web.
“And how big is this picture going to be, Mister Venius?” he said without even looking at me.
“Three feet by four feet.”
“What will you charge for the picture?”
“Fifty ducats.”
Van Spreckdal placed the drawing on the table and took out of his pocket a drooping green silk purse, elongated into the shape of a pear. He slid the rings in order to open it.
“Fifty ducats then,” he said. “There you have them.”
I went dizzy.
The baron got up, said goodbye to me and I heard his great ivory-handled cane knock against each step till he finally came to the bottom of the stairs. Then, waking up from my temporary stupor, I suddenly remembered that I had not thanked him, and I ran down those four flights of stairs as quick as a flash. But, when I got to the door, it was in vain that I looked both right and left—the street was deserted.
“Well! Fancy that!” I said to myself. “Here’s a how-d’you-do!”
And I went back up the stairs quite out of breath.
CHAPTER II
The surprising way in which Van Spreckdal had just appeared to me threw me into a deep trance: “Yesterday,” I said to myself as I contemplated the pile of ducats sparkling in the sunshine, “yesterday I formed the culpable intention of cutting my throat for the lack of a few miserable schillings and today good fortune smiles on me unbidden… A good job then I didn’t open my razor and, if ever the temptation to do away with myself overtakes me again, I’ll take care to put the thing off to the following day.”
After these judicious reflexions, I sat down to finish the sketch. Four strokes of the charcoal pencil and that would be that. But here an unfathomable disappointment awaited me. I found it impossible to make these four strokes. I had lost the thread of my inspiration and the mysterious personage would not emerge from the limbo of my brain. It was in vain that I evoked it, mapped it out, went back to it—it was no more in keeping with the whole than a figure by Raphael would be in a David Teniers smoke-filled snug… I was sweating cobs.
To cap it all Rap, in accordance with his habitual good manners, opened the door without knocking, his eyes becoming glued to my pile of ducats. Then he cried out in a voice like a yelp:
“Aha! I’ve caught you. Will you persist in telling me now, Mr
Painter, that you’re short of money?…”
And his claw-like fingers advanced with that nervous trembling that the sight of gold always arouses in misers.
For a few seconds I stood there stupefied.
The memory of all the open snubs that this individual had inflicted on me, his covetous gaze, his insolent smile, everything about him exasperated me. In a single bound I seized him and, pushing him out of my bedroom with both hands, I flattened his nose with the door.
This was all done with the crack and the rapidity of a jack-in-the-box.
But outside the old usurer was shrieking like an eagle:
“I want my money! Thief! I want my money!”
The other tenants were coming out of their rooms and asking questions:
“What’s wrong? What’s happening?”
I opened the door again abruptly and dispatched a kick to the spine of Mister Rap that promptly sent him reeling down more than a score of stairs:
“That’s what’s happening!” I cried, beside myself. Then I locked the door and bolted it while the laughs of my neighbours greeted Mister Rap as he fell.
I was pleased with myself and rubbed my hands together joyfully. This adventure had put new life into me. I went back to the task in hand and was going to finish the sketch when my ears were assailed by an out of the ordinary noise.
Rifle butts were being struck against the pavement… I looked out of my window and saw three gendarmes, their carbines grounded, their cocked hats crosswise, standing on guard at the main entrance.
“Has that scoundrel Rap broken something?” I said to myself in fear and trembling.
And see what a strange thing the human mind is: I, who had wanted to cut my own throat just the previous day, shuddered to the marrow of my bones when I reflected that I might well be hanged if Rap was dead.
The stairwell filled with a hubbub of noises… There was a rising tide of muffled footfalls, the metallic clink of weapons and brief verbal exchanges.
Suddenly they tried to open my door. It was closed!
Then there was a general commotion.
“In the name of the law…open up!”
I got to my feet all of a-quiver, my legs virtually giving way under me.
“Open up!” the same voice repeated.
Seeing that flight was impossible, I stumbled towards the door and turned the key to unlock it.
Two fists instantly clamped themselves on my shoulders. A short thickset man, smelling of wine, said to me:
“I’m arresting you!”
He was wearing a bottle-green frock coat buttoned up to the chin, a stovepipe hat…had great brown sideburns…rings on all his fingers and was called Passauf…
He was the chief of police.
Five bulldog heads adorned with flat caps, with long, sharp noses and lower jaws protruding like hooks, were watching me from outside the door.
“What do you want?” I asked Passauf.
“Come downstairs with us,” he shouted out abruptly, motioning to one of his men to grab me.
The latter dragged me out, more dead than alive, while the others ransacked my room from top to bottom.
I went down, held up by my armpits, like a man in the third stage of consumption…my hair flapping about my face and tripping with each step I took.
They threw me into a hansom next to two strapping fellows who were kind enough to show me the ends of two clubs attached to their wrists by a leather strap…then