Monsieur Jonquelle Read Online Free PDF Page A

felicitate Monsieur le Comte upon his health, but upon his courage.”
    â€œCourage!” echoed the man. “What courage have I shown in this affair?”
    â€œMonsieur le Comte continues to mistake the object of my remark,” said the Prefect of Police as he advanced into the room, put his hat and stick on a console and sat down, drawing off his gloves.
    â€œIt was not in the affair in which the Count de Choiseul received his wound that he has shown this daring that moves me to a compliment, but after that, when he came to this house.”
    The man’s face darkened.
    â€œAnd why should I not come here?” he returned.“It is now the property of Lady Landeau. She wired from the Continent directing that I should be removed to this house and properly attended, when she heard of my injury. It was a delicate courtesy, seeing that Lady Landeau is herself prostrated at Bad Nauheim.”
    â€œ
Magnifique
!” exclaimed Monsieur Jonquelle. “Bad Nauheim! It is where one goes for the heart. And such a sensitive, such a delicate and impressionable heart is this heart of my lady.”
    He made a slight gesture.
    â€œWho should know this better than the Count de Choiseul? Ah, Monsieur, do not traverse the soft impeachment. It is the gossip of fashionable Europe. One hears it on every hand, at Biarritz, at Trouville, at Ostend—of course, Monsieur, in the whisper only and under the rose, but one hears it for all that, this infatuation of Lady Landeau for the Count de Choiseul.… Bad Nauheim, truly!
Eh, bien
! Many waters will not quench it, neither those of Haute-Savoie nor of any German spring.”
    â€œMonsieur,” said the man coldly, “you go very far.”
    â€œBut a less distance than the truth,” replied the Frenchman. His manner was careless, debonair.
    â€œAh, my dear Count, you would elude me in the reserves of a becoming modesty, in the humilities of a noble nature. But I pursue you withfelicitations upon your conquest. Perhaps, though, Monsieur does not look upon this affair with so high a value. The Count de Choiseul is a great hunter. The conquest of a romantic woman, without any knowledge of the world and married to a man of twice her age, may not appear to Monsieur to be a triumph of the first order.”
    The wounded man was pale with anger. But Monsieur Jonquelle went on with a light unconcern.
    â€œThe fact that Lord Landeau looked upon the Count de Choiseul as a gentleman, and permitted him the liberties of his friendship and the confidences of a man of honor doubtless, too, robbed the affair of a certain sporting element which Monsieur le Comte would have in his adventures.”
    â€œIs there then no end to the insults that one must receive?” cried the wounded man, white to the lips. “Is it not enough to lay one under espionage like a common felon, to set a creature of the police about one in every servant’s coat; but also the Prefect of Paris must be brought over to lecture one on morals!”
    â€œAh,” replied the Frenchman with an injured air, “the Count de Choiseul does not regard me as his friend! Is gratitude then a mere fancy of the poets? And it is I who have three times warned him from the pit—Monsieur will remember those three times. In Nice when the Countwas about to dispose of some antiques from the collection of—let us say—an adopted uncle. In Paris when the Count was arranging to insure beyond doubt the success of a favorite horse at Auteuil. True the Count had before him a precedent for this in holy legend. Did not Saint Hilarius, according to Saint Jerome, draw upon the instrumentalities of Heaven in order to beat the horses of the Duumvir of Gaza? But times have changed. The saints are not popular in France, and the agencies that Monsieur was about to use for his adventure were, I take it, unknown to the Father of the church.”
    He paused and lifted his finger.
    â€œAnd a