The Wandering Jew — Complete
execute the orders I have received."
"From whom?"
"From General Simon."
"But where is he?"
"When I have proof that you are Prince Djalma, I will tell you. I was
informed that you would be mounted on a black mare, with a red bridle.
But--"
"By the soul of my mother! speak what you have to say!"
"I will tell you all--if you can tell me what was the printed paper,
contained in the last letter that General Simon wrote you from Sumatra."
"It was a cutting from a French newspaper."
"Did it announce good or bad news for the general?"
"Good news--for it related that, during his absence, they had
acknowledged the last rank and title bestowed on him by the Emperor, as
they had done for others of his brothers in arms, exiled like him."
"You are indeed Prince Djalma," said the Smuggler, after a moment's
reflection. "I may speak. General Simon landed last night in Java, but
on a desert part of the coast."
"On a desert part?"
"Because he has to hide himself."
"Hide himself!" exclaimed Djalma, in amazement; "why?"
"That I don't know."
"But where is he?" asked Djalma, growing pale with alarm.
"He is three leagues hence--near the sea-shore--in the ruins of
Tchandi."
"Obliged to hide himself!" repeated Djalma, and his countenance
expressed increasing surprise and anxiety.
"Without being certain, I think it is because of a duel he fought in
Sumatra," said the Smuggler, mysteriously.
"A duel--with whom?"
"I don't know--I am not at all certain on the subject. But do you know
the ruins of Tchandi?"
"Yes."
"The general expects you there; that is what he ordered me to tell you."
"So you came with him from Sumatra?"
"I was pilot of the little smuggling coaster, that landed him in the
night on a lonely beach. He knew that you went every day to the mole,
to wait for him; I was almost sure that I should meet you. He gave me
details about the letter you received from him as a proof that he had
sent me. If he could have found the means of writing, he would have
written."
"But he did not tell you why he was obliged to hide himself?"
"He told me nothing. Certain words made me suspect what I told you--a
duel."
Knowing the mettle of General Simon, Djalma thought the suspicions of
the Smuggler not unfounded. After a moment's silence he said to him:
"Can you undertake to lead home my horse? My dwelling is without the
town--there, in the midst of those trees--by the side of the new mosque.
In ascending the mountain of Tchandi, my horse would be in my way; I
shall go much faster on foot."
"I know where you live; General Simon told me. I should have gone there
if I had not met you. Give me your horse."
Djalma sprang lightly to the ground, threw the bridle to Mahal, unrolled
one end of his sash, took out a silk purse, and gave it to the Smuggler,
saying: "You have been faithful and obedient. Here!--it is a trifle--but
I have no more."
"Kadja-sing was rightly called the 'Father of the Generous,'" said
the Smuggler, bowing with respect and gratitude. He took the road to
Batavia, leading Djalma's horse. The young Indian, on the contrary,
plunged into the coppice, and, walking with great strides, he directed
his course towards the mountain, on which were the ruins of Tchandi,
where he could not arrive before night.
CHAPTER XX. M. JOSHUA VAN DAEL.
M. Joshua Van Dael a Dutch merchant, and correspondent of M. Rodin, was
born at Batavia, the capital of the island of Java; his parents had sent
him to be educated at Pondicherry, in a celebrated religious house, long
established in that place, and belonging to the "Society of Jesus."
It was there that he was initiated into the order as "professor of the
three vows," or lay member, commonly called "temporal coadjutor."
Joshua was a man of probity that passed for stainless; of strict
accuracy in business, cold, careful, reserved, and remarkably skillful
and sagacious; his financial operations were almost always successful,
for a protecting power gave him ever in time, knowledge of events
which might advantageously influence his commercial transactions. The
religious house of Pondicherry was interested in his affairs, having
charged him with the exportation and exchange of the produce of its
large possessions in this colony.
Speaking little, hearing much, never disputing, polite in the
extreme--giving seldom, but with choice and purpose--Joshua, without
inspiring sympathy, commanded generally that cold respect, which is
always paid to the rigid moralist; for instead of yielding to the
influence of lax and dissolute colonial manners, he appeared to live
with great regularity, and his exterior had something of austerity about
it, which tended to overawe.
The following scene took place at Batavia, while Djalma was on his way
to the ruins of Tchandi in the hope of meeting General Simon.
M. Joshua had just retired into his cabinet, in which were many shelves
filled with paper boxes, and huge ledgers and cash boxes lying open upon
desks. The only window of this apartment, which was on the ground floor,
looked out upon a narrow empty court, and was protected externally by
strong iron bars; instead of glass, it was fitted with a Venetian blind,
because of the extreme heat of the climate.
M. Joshua, having placed upon his desk a taper in a glass globe, looked
at the clock. "Half-past nine," said he. "Mahal ought soon to be here."
Saying this, he went out, passing through an antechamber, opened a
second thick door, studded with nail-heads, in the Dutch fashion,
cautiously entered the court (so as not to be heard by the people in
the house), and drew back the secret bolt of a gate six feet high,
formidably garnished with iron spikes. Leaving this gate unfastened, he
regained his cabinet, after he had successively and carefully closed the
two other doors behind him.
M. Joshua next seated himself at his desk, and took from a drawer a long
letter, or rather statement, commenced some time before, and continued
day by day. It is superfluous to observe, that the letter already
mentioned, as addressed to M. Rodin, was anterior to the liberation of
Djalma and his arrival at Batavia.
The present statement was also addressed to M. Rodin, and Van Dael thus
went on with it:
"Fearing the return of General Simon, of which I had been informed by
intercepting his letters--I have already told you, that I had succeeded
in being employed by him as his agent here; having then read his
letters, and sent them on as if untouched to Djalma, I felt myself
obliged, from the pressure of the circumstances, to have recourse
to extreme measures--taking care always to preserve appearances, and
rendering at the same time a signal service to humanity, which last
reason chiefly decided me.
"A new danger imperiously commanded these measures. The steamship
'Ruyter' came in yesterday, and sails tomorrow in the course of the day.
She is to make the voyage to Europe via the Arabian Gulf; her passengers
will disembark at Suez, cross the Isthmus, and go on board another
vessel at Alexandria, which will bring them to France. This voyage, as
rapid as it is direct, will not take more than seven or eight weeks. We
are now at the end of October; Prince Djalma might then be in France
by the commencement of the month of January; and according to your
instructions, of which I know not the motive, but which I execute with
zeal and submission, his departure must be prevented at all hazards,
because, you tell me, some of the gravest interests of the Society would
be compromised, by the arrival of this young Indian in Paris before the
13th of February. Now, if I succeed, as I hope, in making him miss this
opportunity of the 'Ruyter' it will be materially impossible for him to
arrive in France before the month of April; for the 'Ruyter' is the only
vessel which makes the direct passage, the others taking at least four
or five months to reach Europe.
"Before telling you the means which I have thought right to employ,
to detain Prince Djalma--of the success of which means I am yet
uncertain--it is well that you should be acquainted with the following
facts.
"They have just discovered, in British India, a community whose members
call themselves 'Brothers of the Good Work,' or 'Phansegars,' which
signifies simply 'Thugs' or 'Stranglers;' these murderers do not shed
blood, but strangle their victims, less for the purpose of robbing
them, than in obedience to a homicidal vocation, and to the laws of an
infernal divinity named by them 'Bowanee.'
"I cannot better give you an idea of this horrible sect, than by
transcribing here some lines from the introduction of a report
by Colonel Sleeman, who has hunted out this dark association with
indefatigable zeal. The report in question was published about two
months ago. Here is the extract; it is the colonel who speaks:
"'From 1822 to 1824, when I was charged with the magistracy and civil
administration of the district of Nersingpore, not a murder, not the
least robbery was committed by an ordinary criminal, without my being
immediately informed of it; but if any one had come and told me at this
period, that a band of hereditary assassins by profession lived in the
village of Kundelie, within about four hundred yards of my court of
justice--that the beautiful groves of the village of Mundesoor, within
a day's march of my residence, formed one of the most frightful marts of
assassination in all India--that numerous bands of 'Brothers of the Good
Work,' coming from Hindostan and the Deccan, met annually beneath these
shades, as at a solemn festival, to exercise their dreadful vocation
upon all the roads which cross each other in this locality--I should
have taken such a person for a madman, or one who had been imposed upon
by idle tales. And yet nothing could be truer; hundreds of travellers
had been buried every year in the groves of Mundesoor; a whole tribe
of assassins lived close to my door, at the very time I was supreme
magistrate of the province, and extended their devastations to the
cities of Poonah and Hyderabad. I shall never forget, when, to convince
me of the fact, one of the chiefs of the Stranglers, who had turned
informer against them, caused thirteen bodies to be dug up from the
ground beneath my tent, and offered to produce any number from the soil
in the immediate vicinity.'(5)
"These few words of Colonel Sleeman will give some idea of this dread
society, which has its laws, duties, customs, opposed to all other
laws, human and divine. Devoted to each other, even to heroism,
blindly obedient to their chiefs, who profess themselves the immediate
representatives of their dark divinity, regarding as enemies all who do
not belong to them, gaining recruits everywhere by a frightful system of
proselytising--these apostles of a religion of murder go preaching their
abominable doctrines in the shade, and spreading their immense net over
the whole of India.
"Three of their principal chiefs, and one of their adepts, flying from
the determined pursuit of the English governor-general, having succeeded
in making their escape, had arrived at the Straits of Malacca, at no
great distance from our island; a smuggler, who is also something of a
pirate, attached to their association, and by name Mahal, took them on
board his coasting vessel, and brought them hither, where they think
themselves for some time in safety--as, following the advice of the
smuggler, they lie concealed in a thick forest, in which are many ruined
temples and numerous subterranean retreats.
"Amongst these chiefs, all three remarkably intelligent, there is one
in particular, named Faringhea, whose extraordinary energy and eminent
qualities make him every way redoubtable. He is of the mixed race,