The Project Gutenberg EBook of Eden, by Edgar Saltus

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Title: Eden
An Episode

Author: Edgar Saltus

Release Date: April 8, 2010 [EBook #31924]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ASCII

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EDEN

AN EPISODE

BY EDGAR SALTUS

"_Perduto e tutto il tempo che in amar non si spende._"
--Tasso.

CHICAGO, NEW YORK, AND SAN FRANCISCO
BELFORD, CLARKE & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS

Copyright, 1888, by
EDGAR SALTUS

_TO_ _E----H_ _AMICISSIMA_
_New York, 15th May, 1888._

EDEN

I.

It was not until Miss Menemon's engagement to John Usselex was made
public that the world in which that young lady moved manifested any
interest in her future husband. Then, abruptly, a variety of rumors were
circulated concerning him. It was said, for instance, that his real name
was Tchurchenthaler and that his boyhood had been passed tending geese
in a remote Bavarian dorf, from which, to avoid military service, he had
subsequently fled. Again, it was affirmed that in Denmark he was known
as Baron Varvedsen, and that he had come to this country not to avoid
military service, but the death penalty, which whoso strikes a prince
of the blood incurs. Others had heard that he was neither Bavarian nor
Dane, but the outlawed nephew of a Flemish money-lender whose case he
had rifled and whose daughter he had debauched. And there were other
people who held that he had found Vienna uninhabitable owing to the
number of persistent creditors which that delightful city contained.

In this conflict of gossip the real facts were as difficult of discovery
as the truth about Kaspar Hauser, and in view of the divergence of
rumors there were people sensible enough to maintain that as these
rumors could not all be true, they might all