A Book of Scoundrels [76]
dandy; he put on a dress-coat and patent-leather pumps because the dignity of his work demanded a fitting costume. And Bruneau wore the grey suit not without a hope of disguise. Yet you like to think that the Abb looked complacently upon his valise, and had forethought for the cut of his professional coat; and if he be not in the first flight of artistry, remember his provincial upbringing, and furnish the proper excuse.
Meanwhile the scandal of the murdered widow passed into forgetfulness, and the Abb was still impoverished. Already he had robbed his vicar, and the suspicion of the Abb Fricot led on to the final and the detected crime. Now Fricot had noted the loss of money and of bonds, and though he refrained from exposure he had confessed to a knowledge of the criminal. M. Bruneau was naturally sensitive to suspicion, and he determined upon the immediate removal of this danger to his peace. On January 2, 1894, M. Fricot returned to supper after administering the extreme unction to a parishioner. While the meal was preparing, he went into his garden in sabots and bareheaded, and never again was seen alive. The supper cooled, the vicar was still absent; the murderer, hungry with his toil, ate not only his own, but his victim's share of the food, grimly hinting that Fricot would not come back. Suicide was dreamed of, murder hinted; up and down the village was the search made, and none was more zealous than the distressed curate.
At last a peasant discovered some blocks of wood in the well, and before long blood-stains revealed themselves on the masonry. Speedily was the body recovered, disfigured and battered beyond recognition, and the voice of the village went up in denunciation of the Abb Bruneau. Immunity had made the culprit callous, and in a few hours suspicion became certainty. A bleeding nose was the lame explanation given for the stains which were on his clothes, on the table, on the keys of his harmonium. A quaint and characteristic folly was it that drove the murderer straight to the solace of his religion. You picture him, hot and red- handed from murder, soothing his battered conscience with some devilish Requiem for the unshrived soul he had just parted from its broken body, and leaving upon the harmonium the ineradicable traces of his guilt. Thus he lived, poised between murder and the Church, spending upon the vulgar dissipation of a Breton village the blood and money of his foolish victims. But for him `les tavernes et les filles' of Laval meant a veritable paradise, and his sojourn in the country is proof enough of a limited cunning. Had he been more richly endowed, Paris had been the theatre of his crimes. As it is, he goes down to posterity as the Man in the Grey Suit, and the best friend the cabmen of Laval ever knew. Them, indeed, he left inconsolable.
MONSIEUR L'ABB
MONSIEUR L'ABB
The childhood of the Abb 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
Meanwhile the scandal of the murdered widow passed into forgetfulness, and the Abb
At last a peasant discovered some blocks of wood in the well, and before long blood-stains revealed themselves on the masonry. Speedily was the body recovered, disfigured and battered beyond recognition, and the voice of the village went up in denunciation of the Abb
MONSIEUR L'ABB
MONSIEUR L'ABB
The childhood of the Abb
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