is like this: the Comte d'Andresy remembered
several things from his stay with me and from the confidences which I
was foolish enough to make to him. First of all, I was your nephew and
yet you had seen comparatively little of me, because I left Sarzeau when
I was quite a child, and since then our intercourse was limited to the
few weeks which I spent here, fifteen years ago, when I proposed for the
hand of my Cousin Angelique; secondly, having broken with the past, I
received no letters; lastly, there was a certain physical resemblance
between d'Andresy and myself which could be accentuated to such an
extent as to become striking. His scheme was built up on those three
points. He bribed my Arab servants to give him warning in case I left
Algeria. Then he went back to Paris, bearing my name and made up to look
exactly like me, came to see you, was invited to your house once a
fortnight and lived under my name, which thus became one of the many
aliases beneath which he conceals his real identity. Three months ago,
when 'the apple was ripe,' as he says in his letters, he began the
attack by a series of communications to the press; and, at the same
time, fearing no doubt that some newspaper would tell me in Algeria the
part that was being played under my name in Paris, he had me assaulted
by my servants and kidnapped by his confederates. I need not explain any
more in so far as you are concerned, uncle."

The Duc de Sarzeau-Vendome was shaken with a fit of nervous trembling.
The awful truth to which he refused to open his eyes appeared to him in
its nakedness and assumed the hateful countenance of the enemy. He
clutched his nephew's hands and said to him, fiercely, despairingly:

"It's Lupin, is it not?"

"Yes, uncle."

"And it's to him ... it's to him that I have given my daughter!"

"Yes, uncle, to him, who has stolen my name of Jacques d'Emboise from me
and stolen your daughter from you. Angelique is the wedded wife of
Arsene Lupin; and that in accordance with your orders. This letter in
his handwriting bears witness to it. He has upset your whole life,
thrown you off your balance, besieging your hours of waking and your
nights of dreaming, rifling your town-house, until the moment when,
seized with terror, you took refuge here, where, thinking that you would
escape his artifices and his rapacity, you told your daughter to choose
one of her three cousins, Mussy, d'Emboise or Caorches, as her husband.

"But why di