Lippincotts Magazine, January 1875 | Page 7

never passed by Gretna Green. There! that is my _credo_, and I will subscribe to it,
"Your loving nephew, JOHN.
"P. S. Address, with such an enclosure as your generosity will prompt, JEAN K. FFARINA, sole representative and cosmetical chemist in America on behalf of the Farinas of Cologne, at New Orleans where I am going to beat my adversaries like Old HIC--"
At this point the tipsy scrawl became illegible.
"This is not a very handsome apology. Did Fortnoye accept it?" I asked, turning over the clammy and malodorous epistle. At this inquiry the crack of the door widened and Charles appeared, on fire with enthusiasm, and so possessed with self-importance that he forgot the betrayal of his indiscretion.
"I can reply to that question," said Charles. "When M. Fortnoye received the paper from the duelist he read it over and said, 'You have meant to impose on me, monsieur, with an incomplete confession. But, in return for your imperfect restoration of Mademoiselle Joliet's portrait, you have unconsciously set down such a masterpiece of yourself that I am certain your aunt will see you as she never did before.'"
Charles, having thus added himself to our cabal without rebuke, took a lively interest in what followed. The proud father continued: "My son-in-law, after some business preliminaries, wrote me a handsome letter demanding what he had already effectively possessed himself of. I wrote to Francine, already returned to her duties, to be a good girl and make her husband obey her in all things."
"That may have been," said I, "what made Francine take to laughing all day and all night, as I heard she did some little time after my departure from her house. The next news of her," I pursued, "was that she had been spirited away by some sly old kidnapper. I almost suspected Kranich."
"The old kidnapper," said Joliet, laughing heartily at the compliment, "is the man now talking to you. I wanted to take Francine to her godmother. I turned the key in the door at Carlsruhe, set the geographers all upon their travels to explore new worlds, and we have been living ever since quite close to Madame Kranich, who treats me like an emperor."
It was easy now to understand why the young Kranich, as soon as he could identify me as a protector of Francine, had been thrown off his guard and tempted to attack me with his clumsy abuse. It was not very mysterious, even, why he had wished all handsome girls to be drowned in the Rhine. For him a pretty damsel was simply a rival in trade.
[Illustration: READING THE CONTRACT.]
Had I stopped at Wildbad with the party of orpheonists, I should have encountered rather sooner the fatal beauties of Mary Ashburleigh. It was to meet her that Fortnoye had paused at that resort, considering her introduction to Frau Kranich almost indispensable to the success of his scheme. She had no hesitation in following the protecting angel of her lost child. "My object in this journey is a happy marriage," she had told me when to my unworthy care her guardianship had been transferred. If I timorously suspected the marriage to be her own, whose fault was it but mine? My heart leaped up at the successive stages of this recital, its hopes confirmed by every additional fact: the Dark Ladye's hand was certainly free. Fortnoye, I should surmise, was not too desirous to abandon this magnificent companion at Schwetzingen; but the serpent, he knew, was left behind, in company with two or three of his and my friends: it was necessary to take the youth by the ear, as it were, and dismiss him from the country, without loss of time, to his future of counter-jumping. His dueling experience may be of some use to him among the bowie-knives of Louisiana. If his subsequent path is not strewn with roses, let him rejoice that it is at least lubricated with cologne-water.
[Illustration: INTERRUPTED REPOSE.]
An hour had passed, and into my room from his own adjoining one now ambled amicably my friend the baron. He greeted Joliet as an old friend. Many a smoking-match had they had in my garden at Marly. But Hohenfels this morning was in robes of state, with shoes that shone even beside old Father Joliet's, and as a concession to elegance he had abandoned his cavernous pipes in favor of cigarettes. A scroll of this description, flavored with his Cologne pastille and very badly rolled, was trying to exhale itself between his lips.
"What a genius for conversation you have to-day, my Flemming! This hour I have rocked back and forth in bed, trying to understand your observations or to cover my ears and go to rest. Your tongue has been like the tongue of a monastery-bell summoning all hands to penance." But I had hardly