PAGE

"Gentlemen, here stands Alexis Delgrado" 75
Beaumanoir and Felix fortified the position 153
Joan laughed at Alec's masterful methods 199
Stampoff saluted the King in silence 268
In a few minutes the three were securely bound 298
He felt the thrill that ran through her veins 306

A SON OF THE IMMORTALS

CHAPTER I

THE FORTUNE TELLER

On a day in May, not so long ago, Joan Vernon, coming out into the
sunshine from her lodging in the Place de la Sorbonne, smiled a morning
greeting to the statue of Auguste Comte, founder of Positivism. It would
have puzzled her to explain what Positivism meant, or why it should be
merely positive and not stoutly comparative or grandly superlative. As a
teacher, therefore, Comte made no appeal. She just liked the bland look
of the man, was pleased by the sleekness of his white marble. He seemed
to be a friend, a counselor, strutting worthily on a pedestal labeled
"_Ordre et Progres_"; for Joan was an artist, not a philosopher.

Perhaps there was an underthought that she and Comte were odd fish to be
at home together in that placid backwater of the Latin Quarter. Next
door to the old-fashioned house in which she rented three rooms was a
cabaret, a mere wreck of a wineshop, apparently cast there by the
torrent of the Boule Mich, which roared a few yards away. Its luminous
sign, a foaming tankard, showed gallantly by night, but was garish by
day, since gas is akin to froth, to which the sun is pitiless. But the
cabaret had its customers, quiet folk who gathered in the evening to
gossip and drink strange beverages, whereas its nearest neighbor on the
boulevard side was an empty tenement, a despondent ghost to-day, though
once it had rivaled the flaunting tankard. Its frayed finery told of gay
sparks extinguished. A flamboyant legend declared, "Ici on chante, on
boit, on s'amuse(?)" Joan always smirked a little at that suggestive
note of interrogation, which lent a world of meaning to the
half-obliterated statement that Madame Lucette would appear "tous les
soirs dans ses chansons d'actualites."

Nodding to Leontine, the cabaret's amazingly small maid of all work, who
was always washing and never washed, Joan saw the query for the
hundredth time, and, as ever, found its answer in the blistered paint
and dust covered windows: Ma