“This time, I’ve pulled it off,” said Lupin to himself. “Mr. Kesselbach’s great scheme is being realized. All that remains for me to do is to make Waldemar swallow Pierre Leduc; and that is child’s play. The banns between Geneviève and Pierre shall be published tomorrow. And it shall be the grand-duke’s affianced bride that will be presented to Waldemar.”
Full of glee, he started in his motor for Bruggen Castle.
He sang in the car, he whistled, he chatted to his chauffeur:
“Octave, do you know whom you have the honor of driving? The master of the world! … Yes, old man, that staggers you, eh? Just so, but it’s the truth. I am the master of the world.”
He rubbed his hands and went on soliloquizing:
“All the same, it was a long job. It’s a year since the fight began. True, it was the most formidable fight I ever stood to win or lose. … By Jupiter, what a war of giants!” And he repeated, “But this time, I’ve pulled it off! The enemies are in the water. There are no obstacles left between the goal and me. The site is free: let us build upon it! I have the materials at hand, I have the workmen: let us build, Lupin! And let the palace be worthy of you!”
He stopped the car at a few hundred yards from the castle, so that his arrival might create as little fuss as possible, and said to Octave:
“Wait here for twenty minutes, until four o’clock, and then drive in. Take my bags to the little chalet at the end of the park. That’s where I shall sleep.”
At the first turn of the road, the castle appeared in sight, standing at the end of a dark avenue of lime trees. From the distance, he saw Geneviève passing on the terrace.
His heart was softly stirred:
“Geneviève, Geneviève,” he said, fondly. “Geneviève … the vow which I made to the dying mother is being fulfilled as well. … Geneviève a grand-duchess! … And I, in the shade, watching over her happiness … and pursuing the great schemes of Arsène Lupin!”
He burst out laughing, sprang behind a cluster of trees that stood to the left of the avenue and slipped along the thick shrubberies. In this way, he reached the castle without the possibility of his being seen from the windows of the drawing-room or the principal bedrooms.
He wanted to see Dolores before she saw him and pronounced her name several times, as he had pronounced Geneviève’s, but with an emotion that surprised himself:
“Dolores. … Dolores. …”
He stole along the passages and reached the dining-room. From this room, through a glass panel, he could see half the drawing-room.
He drew nearer.
Dolores was lying on a couch; and Pierre Leduc, on his knees before her, was gazing at her with eyes of ecstasy. …
XV
The Map of Europe
Pierre Leduc loved Dolores!
Lupin felt a keen, penetrating pain in the depths of his being, as though he had been wounded in the very source of life; a pain so great that, for the first time, he had a clear perception of what Dolores had gradually, unknown to himself, become to him.
Pierre Leduc loved Dolores! And he was looking at her as a man looks at the woman he loves.
Lupin felt a murderous instinct rise up within him, blindly and furiously. That look, that look of love cast upon Dolores, maddened him. He received an impression of the great silence that enveloped Dolores and Pierre Leduc; and in silence, in the stillness of their attitude there was nothing living but that look of love, that dumb and sensuous hymn in which the eyes told all the passion, all the desire, all the transport, all the yearning that one being can feel for another.
And he saw Mrs. Kesselbach also. Dolores’ eyes were invisible under their lowered lids, the silky eyelids with the long black lashes. But how she seemed to feel that look of love which sought for hers! How she quivered under that impalpable caress!
“She loves him … she loves him,” thought Lupin, burning with jealousy.
And, when Pierre made a movement:
“Oh, the villain! If he dares to touch her, I will kill him!”
Then, realizing the disorder of his reason and striving to combat it, he said to himself:
“What a fool I am! What, you, Lupin, letting yourself go like this! … Look here, it’s only natural that she should love him. … Yes, of course, you expected her to show a certain emotion at your arrival … a certain agitation. … You silly idiot, you’re only a thief, a robber … whereas he is a prince and young. …”
Pierre had not stirred further. But his lips moved and it seemed as though Dolores were waking. Softly, slowly, she raised her lids, turned her head a little and her eyes met the young man’s eyes with the look that offers itself and surrenders itself and is more intense than the most intense of kisses.
What followed came suddenly and unexpectedly, like a thunderclap. In three bounds, Lupin rushed into the drawing-room, sprang upon the young man, flung him to the ground and, with one hand on his rival’s chest, beside himself with anger, turning to Mrs. Kesselbach, he cried:
“But don’t you know? Hasn’t he told you, the cheat? … And you love him, you love that! Does he look like a grand-duke? Oh, what a joke!”
He grinned and chuckled like a madman, while Dolores gazed at him in stupefaction:
“He, a grand-duke! Hermann IV, Grand-duke of Zweibrucken-Veldenz! A reigning sovereign! Elector of Treves! But it’s enough to make one die of laughing! He! Why, his name is Baupré, Gérard Baupré, the lowest of ragamuffins … a beggar, whom I picked up in the gutter! … A grand-duke? But it’s I who made him a grand-duke!
