Chapter 25: Down Among the Dead

IT was nearly midnight when a man hesitatingly walked up to the iron gateway of St. Jean’s burying-ground, in Croix Blanche Street.

As midnight boomed, he saw a spectre cross the grounds under the yews and cypresses, and, approaching the grating, turn a key harshly in the gatelock to show that, if he were a ghost and had the leave to quit his grave, he also had that to go beyond the cemetery altogether.

“Do you not recognize me, Captain B.?” queried the jesting voice of Cagliostro, “or did you forget our appointment?”

“I am glad it is you,” said the man in the French Guards sergeant dress, breathing as if his heart were relieved of great weight. “These devilish streets are so dark and deserted that I do not know but it is better to run up against any body than not to meet a soul.”

“Pshaw,” returned the magician, “the idea of your fearing any thing at any hour of the day or night! You will never make me believe that of a man like you who would go anywhere with a sword by his side. However, step on this side of the railings, and you will be tranquil, my dear Captain Beausire, for you will meet no one but me.”

Beausire acted on the invitation, and the key grated again in the lock, to fasten the gate behind him.

“Keep to this little path,” continued Cagliostro, “and at twenty paces you will come upon a little broken altar, on the steps of which we can nicely manage our little business.”

“Where the mischief do you see any path?” he grumbled, after starting with a good will. “I meet nothing but nettles tearing my ankles and grass up to my knees.”

“I own that this cemetery is as badly kept as any I know of; but it is not astonishing, for here are buried only the condemned prisoners executed in the City, and no one plants flowers for such poor fellows. Still we have some undeniable celebrities here, my dear Beausire. If it were daylight I would show you where lies Bouteville Montmorency, decapitated for having fought a duel; the Knight of Rohan who suffered the same fate for conspiring against the Government; Count Horn broken on the wheel for murdering a Jew; Damiens who tried to kill Louis XVI., and lots more. Oh, you are wrong to defame St. Jean’s; it is badly kept but it well keeps its famous ones.”

Beausire followed the guide so closely that he locked steps with him like a soldier in the second rank with the predecessor so that when the latter stopped suddenly he ran up against him.

“Ah! this is a fresh one; the grave of your comrade Fleurdepine, one of the murderers of François the Assemblymen’s baker, who was hanged a week ago by sentence at the Chatelet; this ought to interest you, as he was, like you, a corporal, a sergeant by his own promotion, and a crimp—I mean a recruiter.”

The hearer’s teeth chattered; the thistles he walked among seemed so many skeleton fingers stretched up to trip him, and make him understand that this is the place where he would have his everlasting sleep.