SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE
By RICHARD HARDING DAVIS
1915
TO HOPE DAVIS
CONTENTS
"SOMEWHERE IN FRANCE"
Marie Gessler, known as Marie Chaumontel, Jeanne d'Avrechy, the Countessd'Aurillac, was German. Her father, who served through theFranco-Prussian War, was a German spy. It was from her mother shelearned to speak French sufficiently well to satisfy even an Academicianand, among Parisians, to pass as one. Both her parents were dead. Beforethey departed, knowing they could leave their daughter nothing savetheir debts, they had had her trained as a nurse. But when they weregone, Marie in the Berlin hospitals played politics, intrigued,indiscriminately misused the appealing, violet eyes. There was ascandal; several scandals. At the age of twenty-five she was dismissedfrom the Municipal Hospital, and as now—save for the violet eyes—shewas without resources, as a compagnon de voyage with a German doctorshe travelled to Monte Carlo. There she abandoned the doctor for HenriRavignac, a captain in the French Aviation Corps, who, when his leaveended, escorted her to Paris.
The duties of Captain Ravignac kept him in barracks near the aviationfield, but Marie he established in his apartments on the BoulevardHaussmann. One day he brought from the barracks a roll of blue-prints,and as he was locking them in a drawer, said: "The Germans would paythrough the nose for those!" The remark was indiscreet, but then Mariehad told him she was French, and any one would have believed her.
The next morning the same spirit of adventure that had exiled her fromthe Berlin hospitals carried her with the blue-prints to the Germanembassy. There, greatly shocked, they first wrote down her name andaddress, and then, indignant at her proposition, ordered her out. Butthe day following a strange young German who was not at all indignant,but, on the contrary, quite charming, called upon Marie. For theblue-prints he offered her a very large sum, and that same hour withthem and Marie departed for Berlin. Marie did not need the money. Nordid the argument that she was serving her country greatly impress her.It was rather that she loved intrigue. And so she became a spy.
Henri Ravignac, the man she had robbed of the blue-prints, was tried bycourt martial. The