The Confessions of Arsène Lupin, Maurice Leblanc [top 10 novels of all time txt] 📗

duke’s valet, came in and said that monsieur le duc was wanted on the telephone. Still fuming, he took down the receiver and growled:

“Well? Who is it? Yes, it’s the Duc de Sarzeau-Vendôme speaking.”

A voice replied:

“I want to apologize to you, monsieur le duc, and to Mlle. Angélique. It’s my secretary’s fault.”

“Your secretary?”

“Yes, the invitations were only a rough draft which I meant to submit to you. Unfortunately my secretary thought.⁠ ⁠…”

“But, tell me, monsieur, who are you?”

“What, monsieur le duc, don’t you know my voice? The voice of your future son-in-law?”

“What!”

“Arsène Lupin.”

The duke dropped into a chair. His face was livid.

“Arsène Lupin⁠ ⁠… it’s he⁠ ⁠… Arsène Lupin.⁠ ⁠…”

Angélique gave a smile:

“You see, father, it’s only a joke, a hoax.”

But the duke’s rage broke out afresh and he began to walk up and down, moving his arms:

“I shall go to the police!⁠ ⁠… The fellow can’t be allowed to make a fool of me in this way!⁠ ⁠… If there’s any law left in the land, it must be stopped!”

Hyacinthe entered the room again. He brought two visiting-cards.

“Chotois? Lepetit? Don’t know them.”

“They are both journalists, monsieur le duc.”

“What do they want?”

“They would like to speak to monsieur le duc with regard to⁠ ⁠… the marriage.⁠ ⁠…”

“Turn them out!” exclaimed the duke. “Kick them out! And tell the porter not to admit scum of that sort to my house in future.”

“Please, father⁠ ⁠…” Angélique ventured to say.

“As for you, shut up! If you had consented to marry one of your cousins when I wanted you to this wouldn’t have happened.”

The same evening, one of the two reporters printed, on the front page of his paper, a somewhat fanciful story of his expedition to the family mansion of the Sarzeau-Vendômes, in the Rue de Varennes, and expatiated pleasantly upon the old nobleman’s wrathful protests.

The next morning, another newspaper published an interview with Arsène Lupin which was supposed to have taken place in a lobby at the Opera. Arsène Lupin retorted in a letter to the editor:

“I share my prospective father-in-law’s indignation to the full. The sending out of the invitations was a gross breach of etiquette for which I am not responsible, but for which I wish to make a public apology. Why, sir, the date of the marriage is not yet fixed. My bride’s father suggests early in May. She and I think that six weeks is really too long to wait!⁠ ⁠…”

That which gave a special piquancy to the affair and added immensely to the enjoyment of the friends of the family was the duke’s well-known character: his pride and the uncompromising nature of his ideas and principles. Duc Jean was the last descendant of the Barons de Sarzeau, the most ancient family in Brittany; he was the lineal descendant of that Sarzeau who, upon marrying a Vendôme, refused to bear the new title which Louis XV forced upon him until after he had been imprisoned for ten years in the Bastille; and he had abandoned none of the prejudices of the old regime. In his youth, he followed the Comte de Chambord into exile. In his old age, he refused a seat in the Chamber on the pretext that a Sarzeau could only sit with his peers.

The incident stung him to the quick. Nothing could pacify him. He cursed Lupin in good round terms, threatened him with every sort of punishment and rounded on his daughter:

“There, if you had only married!⁠ ⁠… After all you had plenty of chances. Your three cousins, Mussy, d’Emboise and Caorches, are noblemen of good descent, allied to the best families, fairly well-off; and they are still anxious to marry you. Why do you refuse them? Ah, because miss is a dreamer, a sentimentalist; and because her cousins are too fat, or too thin, or too coarse for her.⁠ ⁠…”

She was, in fact, a dreamer. Left to her own devices from childhood, she had read all the books of chivalry, all the colourless romances of olden-time that littered the ancestral presses; and she looked upon life as a fairytale in which the beauteous maidens are always happy, while the others wait till death for the bridegroom who does not come. Why should she marry one of her cousins when they were only after her money, the millions which she had inherited from her mother? She might as well remain an old maid and go on dreaming.⁠ ⁠…

She answered, gently:

“You will end by making yourself ill, father. Forget this silly business.”

But how could he forget it? Every morning, some pinprick renewed his wound. Three days running, Angélique received a wonderful sheaf of flowers, with Arsène Lupin’s card peeping from it. The duke could not go to his club but a friend accosted him:

“That was a good one today!”

“What was?”

“Why, your son-in-law’s latest! Haven’t you seen it? Here, read it for yourself: ‘M. Arsène Lupin is petitioning the Council of State for permission to add his wife’s name to his own and to be known henceforth as Lupin de Sarzeau-Vendôme.’ ”

And, the next day, he read:

“As the young bride, by virtue of an unrepealed decree of Charles X, bears the title and arms of the Bourbon-Condés, of whom she is the heiress-of-line, the eldest son of the Lupins de Sarzeau-Vendôme will be styled Prince de Bourbon-Condé.”

And, the day after, an advertisement.

“Exhibition of Mlle. de Sarzeau-Vendôme’s trousseau at Messrs. ⸻’s Great Linen Warehouse. Each article marked with initials L. S. V.”

Then an illustrated paper published a photographic scene: the duke, his daughter and his son-in-law sitting at a table playing three-handed auction-bridge.

And the date also was announced with a great flourish of trumpets: the 4th of May.

And particulars were given of the marriage-settlement. Lupin showed himself wonderfully disinterested. He was prepared to sign, the newspapers said, with his eyes closed, without knowing the figure of the dowry.

All these things drove the old duke crazy. His hatred of Lupin assumed morbid proportions. Much as it went against the grain, he called on the prefect of police, who advised