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"You could have let him off till next day," said Dupontel. The Prince shook his head. "In those times," he said, "it was not the custom to break one's engagements neither to break them nor to allow them to be broken." "I should like to see this Carigny of yours," said Dupontel thoughtfully. "When do you expect him to call on you?" "His letter says 'as soon as possible," answered the Prince.
The men in the room, moving aside, made an avenue from the door to the window in which, the Prince stood. The Prince came along it to greet his guest. As they halted, face to face, Dupontel saw that the young stranger touched the elder on the arm. The Prince seemed to have doubts. He remembered Carigny as a slim youth; the stranger was burly, with a bush of beard and a red face.
He felt a little thrill when the massive club porter, approaching them in the hall, spoke Carigny's name. "Monsieur Carigny telephoned," said the porter. "He particularly desired that Monsieur le Prince should be told, as soon as he arrived, that Monsieur Carigny would call at half-past four." The Prince nodded. "I shall be upstairs, in the card-room," he answered, and passed on.
There are incidents in every man's life concerning which one can never be sure that they are closed; in such a life as that of the Prince de Monpavon there are many. The affair of Carigny, nearly thirty years before, was one of them.
It was with something like the empty shell of a smile that the man answered. "Everybody who knows M'sieur le Prince has heard of him," he said suavely. "H'm!" the Prince grunted doubtfully, but he knew it was true. Everybody had heard of Carigny and the revenge that was due to him; impossible to refuse it to him now.
Their clasped hands fell apart. The Prince looked his incomprehension. The young man was making him a bow of sorts. "I am charmed," he answered. "But read your cards? I don't understand." Dupontel arrested an impulse to step forward, to interrupt, to interfere in some manner. He saw that Carigny smiled. "Yes," he answered. "Tell me which card is which, you know.
Dupontel had not meant to accompany the Prince to his club that day; his purpose had been to leave him at the door and go elsewhere. But it was possible that his meeting with Carigny might be something which it would be well to have seen; and, besides, his affairs were gaining a strange hue; glamour was in them.
This led me to a luxurious sense of dependence on him, and I was willing to live on dreaming and amused, though all around me seemed phantoms, especially the French troupe, the flower of the Parisian stage: Regnault, Carigny, Desbarolles, Mesdames Blanche Bignet and Dupertuy, and Mdlle. Jenny Chassediane, the most spirituelle of Frenchwomen.
I have my share of prudence me! and that is a risk I do not take. No!" He interrupted himself to drink from his glass, while Dupontel sat back and prepared, with a gesture of utter impatience, to be contemptuous and argumentative. "Carigny," said the Prince, setting his glass down, "Carigny, in the old days, believed that too. But he was not prudent.
This led me to a luxurious sense of dependence on him, and I was willing to live on dreaming and amused, though all around me seemed phantoms, especially the French troupe, the flower of the Parisian stage: Regnault, Carigny, Desbarolles, Mesdames Blanche Bignet and Dupertuy, and Mdlle. Jenny Chassediane, the most spirituelle of Frenchwomen.
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