Monsieur Jonquelle by Melville Davisson Post Page B

seen through a green lens is invisible!”
    The Viscount opened his mouth as though he would utter some awful invective, but for a moment he did not speak; then he said strangely, as though he addressed an invisible person:
    â€œWill you tell me who these people are?”
    And the Prefect, Jonquelle, replied to him:
    â€œWith pleasure, Monsieur le Vicomte—the one who writes is the Magistrate Lavelle, and the one who laughs is the oculist Bianchi.”

V.—
The Haunted Door
    Early in April the Marquis Banutelli closed his villa at Bordighera, on the Mediterranean, and traveled to Geneva. He was in frail health, enervated by the sun of the Riviera and displeased with life.
    He had intended to write a great opera at Bordighera, but he could not get the thing to go upon its legs. The Marquis blamed the commonplace times for this plague upon his opera. There was no longer anything mysterious or unknown in the world. A tram carried tourists to the Sphinx; the Americans had penetrated to the Pole—or pretended to have done so—and the English had entered Tibet.
    Moreover the whole race of men was tamed; the big, wild, barbaric passions that used to rend the world were now harnessed to the plow. Men no longer climbed to the stars for a woman or carried a knife a lifetime for an enemy. The tragedies of love and vengeance were settled by the notary and the law court. Romance and adventure had been ejected out of life.
    The Marquis was by no means certain he would find in Geneva what he had failed to find in Bordighera—that is to say, inspiration for his opera—though this city was the very realm of romance. It lay across the bluest lake in the world, beneath the sinister ridge of Salève; behind it was the range of the Jura; and beyond it Mont Blanc emerged on clear mornings from the sky. But he was sure to find there a bracing climate when the wind, like a curse of God, did not blow from the north.
    The Marquis went to the very best hostelry and sat down in a sunny room where he could see that sight of the faërie—the great two-pointed, rose-colored sails of the stone boats descending Lake Leman.
    It was early and there were but few guests—a Japanese, with a French wife; two or three English families, and a distinguished German. The German, alone, interested the Marquis Banutelli.
    He was perhaps sixty-five—a commanding military figure. It was clear from every aspect that the man was a person of importance. Italy and the German Empire were now in very close relations. The Kaiser was thought to be mobilizing his armies. England and France seemed about to be forced into the field. War was in the air; one saw soldiers on every hand, and all the fierce old hatreds had risen from the fields ofJena and Auerstädt, Metz and Sedan, as on the daybreak of a resurrection.
    The Marquis inquired at the bureau, learned that the German was the Prince Ulrich Von Gratz, and presented himself. The two sat over their coffee a long time that evening in the foyer of the hotel. The talk ran upon the necessities and barbarities of war. Von Gratz was a soldier; he had gone through the Franco-German War: and his vivid and realistic experiences, the experiences of a man of action in the deadly struggle of two infuriated peoples, fascinated the Italian, who was essentially a dreamer.
    The interest and appreciation of the Marquis seemed to inspire Von Gratz, and he entered into the details of that hideous barbarity by which the German armies crushed the provinces of France. The Marquis had read the La Débâcle of Zola and the tales of Maupassant, but he never until this day realized the stern implacable savagery with which the uhlan had forced the French peasant to remain a noncombatant while the German armies marched over his fields to Paris.
    The acquaintance ripened into a fine intimacy.
    During the day Von Gratz was not usually to be seen, and was understood to be concerned with one of those