hat she felt his rather hobbledehoy tendencies towards
Buddhism and occultism might some day lead him to her own unhallowed
height of questionable illumination. To be sure d'Ardeche reviled her as
a bad old woman, being himself in that state of enthusiastic exaltation
which sometimes accompanies a boyish fancy for occultism; but in spite
of his distant and repellent attitude, Mlle. Blaye de Tartas made him
her sole heir, to the violent wrath of a questionable old party known to
infamy as the Sar Torrevieja, the "King of the Sorcerers." This
malevolent old portent, whose gray and crafty face was often seen in the
Rue M. le Prince during the life of Mlle. de Tartas had, it seems, fully
expected to enjoy her small wealth after her death; and when it appeared
that she had left him only the contents of the gloomy old house in the
Quartier Latin, giving the house itself and all else of which she died
possessed to her nephew in America, the Sar proceeded to remove
everything from the place, and then to curse it elaborately and
comprehensively, together with all those who should ever dwell therein.
Whereupon he disappeared.
This final episode was the last word I received from Eugene, but I knew
the number of the house, 252 Rue M. le Prince. So, after a day or two
given to a first cursory survey of Paris, I started across the Seine to
find Eugene and compel him to do the honors of the city.
Every one who knows the Latin Quarter knows the Rue M. le Prince,
running up the hill towards the Garden of the Luxembourg. It is full of
queer houses and odd corners,--or was in '86,--and certainly No. 252
was, when I found it, quite as queer as any. It was nothing but a
doorway, a black arch of old stone between and under two new houses
painted yellow. The effect of this bit of seventeenth-century masonry,
with its dirty old doors, and rusty broken lantern sticking gaunt and
grim out over the narrow sidewalk, was, in its frame of fresh plaster,
sinister in the extreme.
I wondered if I had made a mistake in the number; it was quite evident
that no one lived behind those cobwebs. I went into the doorway of one
of the new hotels and interviewed the concierge.
No, M. d'Ardeche did not live there, though to be sure he owned the
mansion; he himself resided in Meudon, in the country house of the late
Mlle. de Tartas. Would Monsieur like the number and the street?
Monsieur would like them extremely, so I took the card that the
concierge
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