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Page 78
The dinner came to an end, or, rather, the diners rose, the dinner
having this hour or more been cleared from the table; and each went to
his or her state-room mastered by various degrees of astonishment.
Fitzgerald moved in a kind of waking sleep. Napoleon IV! That there
was a bar sinister did not matter. The dazzle radiated from a single
point: a dream of empire! M. Ferraud had not jested; Breitmann was
mad, obsessed, a monomaniac. It was grotesque; it troubled the senses
as a Harlequin's dance troubles the eyes. A great-grandson of
Napoleon, and plotting to enter France! And, good Lord! with what?
Two million francs and half a dozen spendthrifts. Never had there been
a wilder, more hopeless dreamer than this! Whatever antagonism or
anger he had harbored against Breitmann evaporated. Poor devil, indeed!
He understood M. Ferraud now. Breitmann was mad; but till he made a
decisive stroke no man could stay him. So many things were clear now.
He was after the treasure, and he meant to lay his hands upon it,
peacefully if he could, violently if no other way opened. That day in
the Invalides, the old days in the field, his unaccountable appearance
on the Jersey coast; each of these things squared themselves in what
had been a puzzle. But, like the admiral, he wished that there were no
women on board. There would be a contest of some order, going forward,
where only men would be needed. Pirates! He rolled into his bunk with
a dry laugh.
Meantime M. Ferraud walked the deck alone, and finally when Breitmann
approached him, it was no more than he had been expecting.
"Among other things," began the secretary, with ominous calm, "I should
like to see the impression of your thumb."
"That lock was an ingenious contrivance. It was only by the merest
accident I discovered it."
"It must be a vile business."
"Serving one's country? I do not agree with you. Wait a moment, Mr.
Breitmann; let us not misunderstand each other. I do not know what
fear is; but I do know that I am one of the few living who put above
all other things in the world, France: France with her wide and
beautiful valleys, her splendid mountains, her present peace and
prosperity. And my life is nothing if in giving it I may confer a
benefit."
"Why did you not tell the whole story? A Frenchman, and to deny
oneself a climax like this?"
M. Ferraud remained silent.
"If you had not meddled! Well, you have, and these others must bear
the brunt with you, should anything serious happen."
"Without my permission you will not remain in Ajaccio a single hour.
But that would not satisfy me. I wish to prove to you your blindness.
I will make you a proposition. Tear up those papers, erase the memory
from your mind, and I will place in your hands every franc of those two
millions."
Breitmann laughed harshly. "You have said that I am mad; very well, I
am. But I know what I know, and I shall go on to the end. You are
clever. I do not know who you are nor why you are here with your
warnings; but this will I say to you: to-morrow we land, and every hour
you are there, death shall lurk at your elbow. Do you understand me?"
"Perfectly. So well, that I shall let you go freely."
"A warning for each, then; only mine has death in it."
"And mine, nothing but good-will and peace."
CHAPTER XXI
CAPTAIN FLANAGAN MEETS A DUKE
The isle of Corsica, for all its fame in romance and history, is yet
singularly isolated and unknown. It is an island whose people have
stood still for a century, indolent, unobserving, thriftless. No
smoke, that ensign of progress, hangs over her towns, which are squalid
and unpicturesque, save they lie back among the mountains. But the
country itself is wildly and magnificently beautiful: great mountains
of granite as varied in colors as the palette of a painter, emerald
streams that plunge over porphyry and marble, splendid forests of pine
and birch and chestnut.
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