I was a
_balourd, a benet, un ane_, and figured even in caricatures. I
became a sort of public character, a dignity,
"Unto which I was not born,"
and from which I fled as soon as I conveniently could, without even
paying my friend, the Marquis d'Harmonville, a visit at his hospitable
chateau.
The Marquis escaped scot-free. His accomplice, the Count, was executed.
The fair Eugenie, under extenuating circumstances--consisting, so far as
I could discover of her good looks--got off for six years' imprisonment.
Colonel Gaillarde recovered some of his brother's money, out of the not
very affluent estate of the Count and soi-disant Countess. This, and the
execution of the Count, put him in high good humor. So far from
insisting on a hostile meeting, he shook me very graciously by the hand,
told me that he looked upon the wound on his head, inflicted by the knob
of my stick, as having been received in an honorable though irregular
duel, in which he had no disadvantage or unfairness to complain of.
I think I have only two additional details to mention. The bricks
discovered in the room with the coffin, had been packed in it, in straw,
to supply the weight of a dead body, and to prevent the suspicions and
contradictions that might have been excited by the arrival of an empty
coffin at the chateau.
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