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The house of the Baroness was a very curious place; the reporter Jacquemin, who was there at all times, testing the wines and correcting the menus, would have called it "bizarre." The Baroness received people in all circles of society; oddities liked her, and she did not dislike oddities.

That some one is the admirable woman who bears so honorably the name which you have given her, and lives so bravely the life you have doomed her to. Madame Jacquemin has redeemed the infamy of Monsieur Puck. But when, in the future, you have to speak of the misfortunes of others, think a little of your own existence, and profit by the moral lesson given you by AN UNKNOWN.

And Zilah said to himself, that this was, perhaps, the first time that this woman had ever been brought in contact with anything pertaining to her husband's fashionable life and in what shape? that of a man who had come to demand satisfaction for an injury, and to say to Jacquemin: "I shall probably kill you, Monsieur!"

Zilah remembered this Jacquemin now. It was he whom he had seen taking notes upon the parapet of the quay, and afterward at the wedding, where he had been brought by the Baroness Dinati.

Jacquemin Lampourde, after parting company with Merindol, seemed in great uncertainty as to which way he should go, and had not yet decided when he reached the end of the Pont-Neuf. He was like the donkey between two bundles of hay; or, if that comparison be not pleasing, like a piece of iron between two magnets of equal power.

"Let us have another; but Maisons-Lafitte is too near. We will go to Rouen the next time; or rather, I invite you all to a day fete in Paris, a game of polo, a lunch, a garden party, whatever you like. I will arrange the programme with Yamada and Jacquemin." "Willingly," responded the Japanese, with a low bow. "To collaborate with Monsieur Jacquemin will be very amusing."

And the next morning would appear in the reports, which he wrote himself under various pseudonyms: "Our compliments to our friend Jacquemin, if he had anything to do with the selection of the wines, in addition to directing the rehearsals of the Baroness's operetta, which latter work he most skilfully accomplished.

He knocked, however, at the door on the right, as he had been directed. No one came to open it; but he could hear within footsteps and indistinct cries. He then perceived that there was a bell-rope, and he pulled it. Immediately he heard some one approaching from within. He felt a singular sensation of concentrated anger, united to a fear that the Jacquemin he was in search of was not there.

He had still to obtain a description of the bride's toilettes, the genealogy of General Vogotzine, a sketch of the bridegroom's best friend, Varhely, and a thousand other details. "Where will the wedding take place?" he asked the Baroness. "At Maisons-Lafitte. Oh! everything is perfect, my dear Jacquemin, perfect! An idyl! All the arrangements are exquisite, exquisite!

But suppose we suspend hostilities a moment to take breath." So saying Jacquemin Lampourde lowered the point of his sword, and de Sigognac did the same. They stood eyeing each other for a few moments with mutual admiration and curiosity, and then resumed the contest more fiercely than ever each man doing his best, as he had need to do, and enjoying it.