Produced by David Widger
By Edward Bulwer-Lytton
Graham Vane had heard nothing for months from M. Renard, when one morninghe received the letter I translate:
"MONSIEUR,—I am happy to inform you that I have at last obtained onepiece of information which may lead to a more important discovery. Whenwe parted after our fruitless research in Vienna, we had both concurredin the persuasion that, for some reason known only to the two ladiesthemselves, Madame Marigny and Madame Duval had exchanged names—that itwas Madame Marigny who had deceased in the name of Madame Duval, andMadame Duval who had survived in that of Marigny.
"It was clear to me that the beau Monsieur who had visited the falseDuval must have been cognisant of this exchange of name, and that, if hisname and whereabouts could be ascertained, he, in all probability, wouldknow what had become of the lady who is the object of our research; andafter the lapse of so many years he would probably have very slightmotive to preserve the concealment of facts which might, no doubt, havebeen convenient at the time. The lover of the soi-disant MademoiselleDuval was by such accounts as we could gain a man of some rank—verypossibly a married man; and the liaison, in short, was one of thosewhich, while they last, necessitate precautions and secrecy.
"Therefore, dismissing all attempts at further trace of the missing lady,I resolved to return to Vienna as soon as the business that recalled meto Paris was concluded, and devote myself exclusively to the search afterthe amorous and mysterious Monsieur.
"I did not state this determination to you, because, possibly, I might bein error—or, if not in error, at least too sanguine in my expectations—and it is best to avoid disappointing an honourable client.
"One thing was clear, that, at the time of the soi-disant Duval'sdecease, the beau Monsieur was at Vienna.
"It appeared also tolerably clear that when the lady friend of thedeceased quitted Munich so privately, it was to Vienna she repaired, andfrom Vienna comes the letter demanding the certificates of Madame Duval'sdeath. Pardon me, if I remind you of all these circumstances no doubtfresh in your recollection. I repeat them in order to justify theconclusions to which they led me.
"I could not, however, get permission to absent myself from Paris for thetime I might require till the end of last April. I had meanwhile soughtall private means of ascertaining what Frenchmen of rank and station werein that capital in the autumn of 1849. Among the list of the very fewsuch Messieurs I fixed upon one as the most likely to be the mysteriousAchille—Achille was, indeed, his nom de bapteme.
"A man of intrigue—a bonnes fortunes—of lavish expenditure withal;very tenacious of his dignity, and avoiding any petty scandals by whichit might be lowered; just the man who, in some passing affair ofgallantry with a lady of doubtful repute, would never have signed histitular designation to a letter, and would have kept himself as muchincognito as he could. But this man was dead—had been dead some years.He had not died at Vienna—never visited that capital for some yearsbefore his death. He was then, and had long been, the ami de la maisonof one of those grandes dames of whose intimacy grands seigneurs arenot ashamed. They parade there the bonnes fortunes they concealelsewhere. Monsi