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As he was wrapping his corporeal treasure in his roquelaire of sables, previous to immersing himself in his chair, he had the mortification of seeing Lucy, who with her father, from some cause or other, had been delayed in the hall, handed to the carriage by Captain Clifford.

Thus speaking, Fortunato possessed himself of my arm. Putting on a mask of black silk, and drawing a roquelaire closely about my person, I suffered him to hurry me to my palazzo. There were no attendants at home; they had absconded to make merry in honor of the time. I had told them that I should not return until the morning, and had given them explicit orders not to stir from the house.

Forgotten was the cold in his hurried flight through the trees; but by-and-by it compelled his attention, and he fell to beating his arms in the shelter of a plantation of yews. "Mort de ma vie!" he thought while in this occupation, "why should I not have a roquelaire?

He likewise made himself master of the town and castle of Eyde; but the duke de Noailles advancing with a body of forces to join the duke de Roquelaire, who commanded in those parts, the English abandoned their conquests, and re-embarked with precipitation. After the battle of Poultowa the czar of Muscovy reduced all Livonia; but he and king Augustus agreed to a neutrality for Pomerania.

"Yes, yes," I said, "yes, yes." "You? Impossible! A mason?" "A mason," I replied. "A sign," he said. "It is this," I answered, producing a trowel from beneath the folds of my roquelaire. "You jest," he exclaimed, recoiling a few paces. "But let us proceed to the Amontillado." "Be it so," I said, replacing the tool beneath the cloak, and again offering him my arm. He leaned upon it heavily.

Happily the table behind which he stood was one of those old-fashioned toilet affairs, with the back part, which was turned toward the door, sheeted over with wood, so that his ungartered stockings and rascally old slippers, were invisible. Even so, it was bad enough: he was arrayed in a shabby old silk roquelaire, and there was a towel upon his breast, pinned behind his neck.

As he was wrapping his corporeal treasure in his roquelaire of sables, previous to immersing himself in his chair, he had the mortification of seeing Lucy, who with her father, from some cause or other, had been delayed in the hall, handed to the carriage by Captain Clifford.

"Here's a pretty problem!" he told himself, hesitating upon the brink of the ditch into which dipped a massive stair "Here's a pretty problem! to have the roquelaire or to fly without it and perish of cold, because there is one chance in twenty that monsieur the warder opposite my chamber may not be wholly a fool and may have looked into his mousetrap.

Who was to undertake the delicate commission, became the next point to consider. M. de Roquelaire declined, not wishing, as he said, to infringe upon the rights of the grand almoner, who was now at Versailles. M. de la Roche Aymon was therefore sent for, requesting his immediate attendance. Never did invitation arrive more <mal a propos>, or more cruelly disturb any manoeuvring soul.

He then reluctantly re-entered his carriage, and, bidding the postilions drive as fast as possible, wrapped himself in his roquelaire, and divided his thoughts between Lucy Brandon and the homard au gratin with which he proposed to console him self immediately on his return home.