Adeline and Hortense should end their days in struggling
with poverty, while she, a visitor at the Tuileries, would lord it in
the fashionable world.
A terrible disaster overthrew the old maid from the social heights
where she so proudly enthroned herself.
On the very day when the banns were first published, the Baron
received a second message from Africa. Another Alsatian arrived,
handed him a letter, after assuring himself that he spoke to Baron
Hulot, and after giving the Baron the address of his lodgings, bowed
himself out, leaving the great man stricken by the opening lines of
this letter:--
"DEAR NEPHEW,--You will receive this letter, by my calculations,
on the 7th of August. Supposing it takes you three days to send us
the help we need, and that it is a fortnight on the way here, that
brings us to the 1st of September.
"If you can act decisively within that time, you will have saved
the honor and the life of yours sincerely, Johann Fischer.
"This is what I am required to demand by the clerk you have made
my accomplice; for I am amenable, it would seem, to the law, at
the Assizes, or before a council of war. Of course, you understand
that Johann Fischer will never be brought to the bar of any
tribunal; he will go of his own act to appear at that of God.
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