“If I understand you aright,” said Jekyl, “You are to conduct the whole negotiations to a successful end, and that I shall have neither a bill to endorse, nor a duel to fight, throughout the affair.”
“You shall be scathless.”
“There is another point,” said Jekyl, quickly. “How shall I figure in the newspapers,—Albert Jekyl, Esquire, of where? Have you thought of that? I wish I had even an uncle a baronet.”
“Pooh, pooh!” said D'Esmonde, impatiently. “You marry into the peerage; that's quite enough.”
“Perhaps you 're right,” said Jekyl. “All that enumeration of family connection——'niece to the Chief Justice of Rembouk,' or 'cousin-german to the Vice-Consul at Gumdalloo'—smacks terribly of 'Moses and Son.'”
“We are agreed, then,” said the Abbé, rising.
“I swear,” said Jekyl, rising, and throwing out his hand in the attitude of the well-known picture of the “Marshals.” “The step that I am about to take will throw its gloom over many a dinner-party, and bring sadness into many a salon; but I 'll retire at least with dignity, and, like Napoleon, I'll write my memoirs.”
“So far, then, so good,” said D'Esmonde; “now, with your leave, I throw myself on this sofa and snatch an hour's sleep.” And ere Jekyl had arranged the folds of what he called his “sable pelisse” as a covering, the Abbé was in deep slumber.