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"He is a lucky man if he can find a second Josepha within twenty-four hours!" said Crevel. "But I am not altogether surprised, for he told me one evening at supper that when he was a young man he always had three mistresses on hand that he might not be left high and dry the one he was giving over, the one in possession, and the one he was courting for a future emergency.
As you see, he has kept his infidelity a mystery, for I did not know that he had succeeded you in the affections of Mademoiselle Josepha " "Oh, it has cost him a pretty penny, madame. His singing-bird has cost him more than a hundred thousand francs in these two years. Ah, ha! you have not seen the end of it!" "Have done with all this, Monsieur Crevel.
When the contractor had prospered to the point where he needed and could afford a bookkeeper, he employed a gray-haired derelict of the grade, half of whose duties were to educate Josepha. The old man loved the child and did his best by her, guiding her successfully through the elementary branches and succeeding in implanting in her mind what is known as a common-school education.
The beautiful young Johanna was borne to the vaults of the Capuchins, while in the palace its inmates were panic-stricken to hear that Josepha of Bavaria, too, had taken the infection. With such lightning swiftness had the venom darted through the veins of the unhappy empress, that her attendants had fled in disgust from the pestiferous atmosphere of her chamber.
You bought me as a man buys a pistol to kill his adversary. I wanted bread I accepted the bargain." "But you have not carried it out," said Crevel, the tradesman once more. "You want Baron Hulot to be told that you have robbed him of his mistress, to pay him out for having robbed you of Josepha? Nothing can more clearly prove your baseness.
"That is what I said to you when you took Josepha," said Crevel. "Look here, Crevel, it is impossible. Give me some proof. Have you a key, as I have, to let yourself in?" And having reached the house, the Baron put the key into the lock; but the gate was immovable; he tried in vain to open it. "Do not make a noise in the streets at night," said Crevel coolly.
"She must die, then and it is I who have murdered her!" shrieked the empress, wildly; and she fell fainting to the floor. On the fifteenth of October, the day on which Josepha was to have given her hand to the King of Naples, the bells of Vienna tolled her funeral knell.
She took no notice of the breach of etiquette of which Antoinette was guilty, in rushing unannounced upon her solitude. Her eyes were fixed upon the chapel of the Capuchins in whose vaults lay so many whom she had loved. Her heart and thoughts were within those gray walls, now with her husband and her dead children, now with Josepha, for whom she felt pang after pang of anxiety.
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