Godfrey d’Etigues still went on beating his breast, on his knees at the
bottom of the hole.
Ralph left them.
* * * * *
That evening one of the Paris papers published in its final issue the
following paragraph:
M. Beaumagnan, a barrister well known in militant royalist circles,
whose death in Spain had already been reported by mistake, committed
suicide this morning at a village in Normandy of the name of
Mesnil-sous-Jumièges, on the banks of the Seine. The reasons for
this suicide are absolutely mysterious. Two of his friends, Baron
d’Etigues and M. Oscar de Bennetot, who were with him, declare that
they were spending the night at the château de Tancarville, where
they were staying for some days, when Monsieur Beaumagnan awoke
them. He was wounded and in a state of great agitation. He insisted
on their harnessing a horse to a dog-cart and driving at once to
Jumièges and from there to a meadow near Mesnil-sous-Jumièges. Why?
Why this nocturnal expedition to a lonely meadow? Why this suicide?
Questions to which they can give no answer.
The next day the Havre papers published accounts of an incident which
are summed up fairly well in the following article:
Last night Prince Lavosneff, who had come to Havre to try a yacht
which he had recently purchased, witnessed a terrible drama. He was
returning to the French coast when he saw a column of flame about a
mile and a half away and heard a loud explosion--an explosion, by the
way, which was heard at several places along the coast. The Prince
at once steered his yacht towards the spot at which this sinister
incident had taken place, and there he found fragments of a wreck. On
one of them was a sailor whom they succeeded in rescuing. But they
had hardly the time to learn from him that the wrecked vessel was
called the _Glow-worm_ and belonged to the Countess of Cagliostro,
when all at once he sprang overboard again crying: “There she is!
There she is!”
By the light of the ship’s lanterns they perceived another fragment
of the wreck, to which a woman was clinging, with her head just above
the water. The man succeeded in swimming to her and getting hold of
her. But she clung to him so tightly that she prevented him using his
arms, and the two of them sank. All efforts to find them were vain.
On his return to Havre Prince Lavosneff made a deposition to this
effect, which was also signed by four of his crew.
The paper added:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account