THE SEMI-MONTHLY MAGAZINE SECTION
5
If THE CONFIDENCES OF
ARSENE LUPIN
V THE MARRIAGE OF LUPIN
MAURICE LE BLANC
ILLUSTRATIONS ADRIEN MACHEFERT jj
ONSIEUR ARSENE LUPIN has the
honor to inform you of his approach
ing marriage with Mademoiselle An
gelique de Sarzeau-Vendome, Prin
cesse de Boiubon-Conde, and to re
quest the pleasure of your company
at the wedding, which will take place
at the church of Sainte-Clotilde. . ."
" The Due de Sarzeau-Vendome has the honor to
inform you of the approaching marriage of his
daughter Angelique, Princesse de Bourbon-Conde,
with Monsieur Arsene Lupin and to request . . ."
Jean, Due de Sarzeau-Vendome, could not finish
reading the invitations that he held in his trembling
hand. He was pale with anger, his long, lean body
shaking with tremors.
" There ! " he gasped, handing the two communi
cations to his daughter. " This is what our friends
have received. This has been the talk of Paris since
yesterday ! What do you say to that dastardly in
sult, Angelique? What would your poor mother
say to it, if she were alive? "
Angelique was tall and thin like her father, skinny
and angular like him. She was thirty-three years of
age, always dressed in black stuff, shy and retiring
in manner, with a head too small in proportion to
her height and narrowed on either side until the nose
seemed to jut forth as if in protest against such par
simony. And yet, it would be impossible to say that
she was ugly; for her eyes were extremely beautiful,
soft and grave, proud and a little sad pathetic
eyes that one who saw them once would not readily
forget.
She flushed with shame, at first, on hearing her
father's words, informing her of the scandal of
which she was the victim. But, as she loved him,
notwithstanding his harshness to her, his injustice
and despotic manner, she said:
" Oh, I think it must be meant for a joke, father,
to which we need not pay any attention ! "
" A joke? Why, every one is gossiping about it!
A dozen papers have printed the confounded notice
this morning, with satirical comments. They quote
our pedigree, our ancestors, our illustrious dead.
1 hey pretend to take the thing seriously.
" Still, no one could believe . . ."
" Of course not. But that does n't
prevent us from being the by-word of
Paris."
" It will all be forgotten by tomor
row." "Tomorrow, my girl, people will
remember that the name of Angelique
de Sarzeau-Vendome has been ban
died about as it should not be. Oh,
if I could find out the name of the
scoundrel who has dared ! . . ."
At that moment, Hyacinthe, the
duke's valet, came in to say that mon
sieur le due was wanted on the tele
phone. Still fuming, he took down the receiver and
growled.
"Well? Who is it? Yes, it's the Due de Sarzeau-Vendome
speaking."
A voice replied :
" I want to apologize to you, monsieur le due, and
to Mile. Angelique. It 's my secretary's fault."
" Your secretary? "
" Yes, the invitations were only a rough draft that
I meant to submit to you. Unfortunately, my secre
tary thought . . ."
" But, tell me, monsieur, who are you ? "
" What, monsieur le due, don't you know my
voice? The voice of your future son-in-law? "
"What!"
" Arsene Lupin."
The duke dropped into a chair,
livid.
"Arsene Lupin ... It's he .
pin . . ."
Angelique 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 the room, swinging 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 due.''
"What do they want?"
" They would like to speak to monsieur le due.
with regard to . . . the marriage. . ."
" Turn them out ! " exclaimed the duke. " Keep
them out and tell the porter not to admit scum of
that sort to my house in future."
"Please, father . . ." Angelique ventured to
say.
" As for you, shut up ! If you had consented
to marry one of your cousins when I wanted you
to, this would n't have happened."
The same evening, one of the two reporters
printed, on the front page of his paper, a somewhat
fanciful account of his expedition to the old man
sion of the Sarzeau-Vendfmies in the Rue de Va
rennes, and expatiated pleasantly upon the old no
bleman's wrathful protests.
The next morning, another newspaper published
an interview with Arsene Lupin that was supposed
to have taken place in a lobby at the Opera. Arsene
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 respon
sible, but for which I want to make a public apology.
Why, sir, the date of the marriage is not yet fixed!
The father of my bride-to-be 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;
Iff y
O i j J? I
III V'!- f'
r.j .u " t 3 j i
n
t; 4 1 La!
D'Emboiie wai standing before him, dressed u
Breton fisherman
iffi li y
f) XM : ! 1 it'll
I V i ft ' :S I
- i ' ' if
' I rely on you, my three nephews, to help us to get away"
a Sarzeau could sit witli none other than his peers.
The incident stung him to the quick. Nothing
could pacify him. lie cursed Lupin with resounding
epithets, threatened him with every sort of punish
ment, 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 you are a dreamer,
a sentimentalist! And because your cousins are too
fat, or too thin, or too coarse for you . . ."
She was, in fact, a dreamer. Left to her own de
vices from childhood, she had read all the hooks of
chivalry, all the colorless romances of ohlen-time
that littered the ancestral book shelves; and she
looked upon life as a fairy talc in which the beau
teous 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 mil
lions that 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, Ange
lique received a wonderful sheaf of
flowers, with Arsene Lupin's card
peeping from it. Tt father could
not go to his club, but a friend ac
costed 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. Arsene 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-Vendome.'"
And, the next day, he read :
As the young bride bears, by virtue
of an unrepealed decree of Charles X,
the title and arms of the Bourbon
Condes, of whom she Is the helress-of-line,
the eldest son of the Lupins de
Sarzeau-Vendome will be styled
Prince de Bourbon-CondG.
His face was
. Arsene Lu-
his pride and the uncompromising nature of his ideas
and principles. Due Jean was the last descendant
of the Barons de Sarzeau, the most ancient family in
Brittany; he was the lineal descendant of that Sar
zeau who, upon marrying a Vendome, refused to
bear the new title that Louis XV forced upon him
until after he had been imprisoned for ten years in
the Bastille ; and he had abandoned none of the pre j
adices 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
And, the day after, an advertisement :
Exhibition of Mile, de Sarzeau-Vendome's trous
seau at Messrs. 'a Great Linen Warehouse.
Each article marked with initials L. S. V.
Then, an illustrated paper published a photo
graphic scene; the duke, his daughter and his son-in-law
sitting at a table playing cut-throat auction
bridge. The date, also, was announced with a great flourish
of trumpets: the 4th of May.
Next, particulars were given of the marriage-set-