United States or Réunion ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
He told me after a time that I was the daughter of his elder brother, the Marquis Francois de Boisdhyver, who in 1814 stayed here at the Inn at the Red Oak under the name of General Pointelle. I was not altogether surprised, for I have always believed that I was French by birth, and his assertion that I was his niece seemed to account for his interest in me.
Frost, "this gentleman called himself General Pointelle. I learned afterwards it was not his real name. Who he actually was, I have not the slightest idea. He brought with him a little girl two years old, a sweet little black-eyed girl, to whom I, having lost your only sister at about that age, took a great fancy. The General also had two servants with him, a valet, and a maid.
The child was abandoned to her rather than left in her charge." "Mais non" said Madame de la Fontaine; "General Pointelle was impelled to act as he did by the strongest motives, nothing less than the tremendous task, undertaken for his country, to liberate the Emperor Napoleon from Elba.
"Do you realize, Tom," Dan said, as they stood side by side watching the blazing logs, "that it is sixteen years since General Pointelle stayed at the Inn and used this room? And the treasure, if there is any treasure, has been mouldering here all that time." "Let's get at it," said Tom. "I confess this place gives me the creeps. Have you got my translation of the directions?" "Yes, here it is."
"We always imagined that the general and his companions had sailed in a French vessel that lay at that time in the Passage and left that morning at dawn. There was nothing to do but adopt little Eloise Pointelle for my own. I changed her name, at your father's suggestion, to Nancy Frost; knowing that Pointelle was not the general's real name.
But Frenchmen look at such things differently, I am told; and it was not to our interests to be over-curious. "They had been with us about two months when one fine morning we awoke to find that General Pointelle, his valet, and the charming Marie had disappeared, and little Eloise was crying alone in her big room. You have probably guessed the child was Nancy."
"Do you think the father is alive, Dan? that he has communicated with her?" "Not that, mother; I am really in the dark. But I believe that the Marquis de Boisdhyver has some connection with your General Pointelle, and that his stay with us this winter has something to do with Nancy." In response to Mrs.
General Pointelle was a soldier, more, he was a marechal of the Empire; the greatest responsibilities devolved upon him. It was impossible for him to be burdened with a child." "But why, madame, did he not take my mother into his confidence?" "Secrecy was imperative, monsieur. Even to this day, you do not know who General Pointelle actually was.
And yet the paper was in his possession; and, she it was who had rescued him from the assassin's knife. Where was she now? What had become of her? What was to be the end of this mad night's work? That she was the woman who had accompanied General Pointelle or the Marechal de Boisdhyver somehow did not surprise him. And for the time the full import of what that implied did not dawn upon him.
"Yes, the uncle of Nancy Frost, or of Eloise de Boisdhyver." "I see," said Dan. "I begin to see." "Eh bien, monsieur. General Pointelle the marechal de Boisdhyver, left the Inn at the Red Oak upon a mission for the Emperor, then at Elba. Helas! that mission ended with disaster after the Hundred Days; for, as you know, the Emperor was sent in exile to St.
Word Of The Day