Page:The City of Masks (1918).djvu/70

58 Mirabeau, known to every one of consequence in Paris by his true and lawful name, Count André Drouillard, as handsome and as high-bred a gentleman as there was in all France, shot and killed, with all the necessary ceremony, a prominent though bourgeoise general in the French Army, satisfactorily ending a liaison in which the Countess and the aforesaid general were the principal characters. Notwithstanding the fact that the duel had been fought in the most approved French fashion, which almost invariably (except in case of accident) provides for a few well-scattered shots and subsequent embraces on the part of the uninjured adversaries, the general fell with a bullet through his heart.

So great was the consternation of the Republic, and so unpardonable the accuracy of the Count, that the authorities deemed it advisable to make an example of the unfortunate nobleman. He was court-martialled by the army and sentenced to be shot. On the eve of the execution he escaped and, with the aid of friends, made his way into Switzerland, where he found refuge in the home of a sequestered citizen who made antique clocks for a living. A price was put upon his head, and so relentless were the efforts to apprehend him that for months he did not dare show it outside the house of his protector.

He repaid the clockmaker with honest toil. In course of time he became an expert repairer. With the confiscation of his estates in France, he resigned himself to the inevitable. He became a man without a country. One morning the newspapers in Paris announced the death, by suicide, of the long-sought