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Updated: May 16, 2025
How does one go from Gemosac to Bordeaux?" "By carriage to Mortagne, where a boat is always to be obtained. It is a short journey, if the tide is favourable," broke in Marie, who was practical before she was polite. "Then," said Loo, as quick as thought, "drive back with me now to Mortagne. I have left my horse in the town, my boat at the pier at Mortagne. It is an hour's drive.
She spoke to Barebone, only half-concealing, as Marie had done, the fact that the great respect with which the Marquis de Gemosac was treated was artificial, and would fall to pieces under the strain of an emergency a faint echo of the old regime. "When you are gone," the girl continued, still addressing Barebone, "Marie and I can keep them out at least an hour probably more.
"There," said Marie, in a whisper. "It is Mademoiselle, who has returned from the good Sisters. And the story that you told of the fever at Saintes is true." The great bell hanging inside the gates of Gemosac was silent for two days after the return of Juliette de Gemosac from her fever-stricken convent school, at Saintes.
"Bon Dieu! my old friend, what do you expect?" replied Madame de Chantonnay to a rather incoherent statement made to her one May afternoon by the Marquis de Gemosac. "It is the month of May," she further explained, indicating with a gesture of her dimpled hand the roses abloom all around them.
It was so easy to make his way in this world, which threw its doors open to him, greeted him with outstretched hands, and only asked him to charm them by being himself. He had not even to make an effort to appear to be that which he was not. He had only to be himself, and they were satisfied. Part of his role was Juliette de Gemosac.
There followed a tramping on the stairs and a half-suppressed laugh as the new-comer stumbled upward. Marie opened the door slowly. "It is a gentleman," she announced, "who does not give his name." Juliette de Gemosac was standing at the far side of the table, with the lamp throwing its full light upon her. She was dressed in white, with a blue ribbon at her waist and wrists.
"For I've brought him up since the cradle. He's been at sea with me in fair weather and foul and he is not the same as us." Dormer Colville attached so much importance to the captain's grave jest that he interpreted it at once to Monsieur de Gemosac. "Captain Clubbe," he said, "tells us that he does not need to be informed that this Loo Barebone is the man we seek. He has long known it."
The journey lasted nearly two months, and before they passed north of the Loire at Nantes and quitted the wine country, the vintage was over. "We must say that we are cider merchants, that is all," observed Dormer Colville, when they crossed the river, which has always been the great divider of France. "He is sobering down. I believe he will become serious," wrote he to the Marquis de Gemosac.
The Marquis de Gemosac gave a curt laugh, which thrilled with a note of that fearful joy known to those who seek to control the uncontrollable. "At that time," he admitted, "it might be so. But not now. At that time there lived Louis XVIII. and Charles X., and his sons, the Duc d'Angouleme and the Duc de Berri, who might reasonably be expected to have sons in their turn.
And after a long pause one or two appreciators answered: "You're right," and laughed good-humouredly. The Marquis de Gemosac sat down again, with a certain effort at self-control, on the balk of timber which had been used by some generations of tide-watchers. He turned and exchanged a glance with Dormer Colville, who stood at his side leaning on his gold-headed cane.
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