Originally published: 1899
Genres: Adventure, Children's
Goodreads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/116271836-frank-merriwell-on-the-boulevards-astonishing-the-europeans
Gutenberg link: https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/63752
Chapters: 21
Warning: This may include outdated and derogatory language and attitudes.
CHAPTER I
“MADEMOISELLE MYSTERIE”
“Well, fellows, what do you think of Paris?” asked Frank Merriwell, settling himself into a comfortable position on his chair.
With his three Yale friends, Frank had been in the French capital for a day. The party had crossed from England the previous day, and, after a good night’s sleep, the first for three of the party on the French shore, they had sallied forth to spend the day seeing the sights of Paris.
“Paris!” cried Harry Rattleton, striking an attitude in the middle of the room; “Paris is a—a relief!”
“I should say so!” nodded Jack Diamond, standing by a window, from which he could look out upon the brilliantly lighted Place Vendome, in the center of which rose the majestic Vendome Column, the most imposing monument of all Europe. “After London, Paris is heaven!”
“Haw!” grunted Bruce Browning, who was in his favorite attitude of rest, stretched at full length on a comfortable couch. “Paris would be all right if it wasn’t full of Frenchmen.”
“As for that,” smiled Frank, “it is full of Englishmen, Americans, and people from all over the world, and every well-educated Frenchman can talk English, you know.”
“Paris is beautiful!” cried Diamond. “Look at that column out there! Just think, the bronze from which it was built was furnished by Austrian and Russian cannons captured in battle by the French! From base to summit, it is covered with bronze figures, in relief, forming a miniature army, with cannons, horses, and accouterments, ascending by a spiral road to the massive figure of Napoleon at the top. Oh, it is a sight for the eyes of the world!”
“The statue, yes,” nodded Frank. “Think of robing Napoleon in the garb of a Roman emperor! That is the one thing in bad taste about the column. But that was not always so.”
“How’s that?” exclaimed Rattleton. “Have they changed his clothes from the original suit given him?”
“That is not the original statue at the top of the column.”
“No? Why, how—”
“After Waterloo, when the Bourbons once more governed France, they took Napoleon’s statue down. The original one represented him in the cocked hat and old gray coat, immortalized on many a field of victory.”
“And they never put it back?”
“In its place, they erected a monstrous fleur-de-lis. However, this combination of the emblem of the Bourbon family and a memorial of Napoleon was perfectly absurd, and the people protested against it. Louis Philippe yielded to the desire of the masses, and the present figure of Napoleon was erected. This monument was shamefully treated by the communists.”
“Eh! Why, they didn’t bother themselves with that, did they?”
“They pulled it down. It was necessary to lay a thick bed of tan along the street, to mitigate the shock when it fell. The national troops arrived in time to prevent its complete ruin, and it was reconstructed as you see it.”
“It’s strange that people like the communists, nihilists, anarchists, and that sort, always, when possible, destroy everything they can in the way of sculpture, architecture, and art. They seem possessed by a senseless rage against the beautiful. Such human beings plainly show the low and brutal in their natures. They rob themselves of sympathy by their acts and make themselves detested, as they should be. God did not put us into the world to hate and destroy,” declared Diamond.
“Oh, say, give us a rest!” grunted Browning. “I’m tired.”
“As usual.”
“Now, don’t fling that!” growled the big Yale man.
“Merriwell has kept us on the jump all day, seeing things. He trotted us from the Trocadero to Prison Mazas, and that is pretty nearly from one end of the city to the other. He has shown us all the sights—”
“I beg your pardon!” exclaimed Merry, with a laugh. “I haven’t begun to show you anything of the sights of Paris. All I tried to do was give you a general idea of the city.”
“Dow the hickens—I mean, how the dickens—you ever learned so much about Paris is what puzzles me,” burst forth Rattleton.
“It’s a wonder to all of us,” admitted Diamond. “Why, you seem perfectly familiar with the city, Frank.”
“To a certain extent, I am familiar with it. You know, I spent three weeks here in company with our old friend, Ephraim Gallup, and my guardian, poor Professor Scotch, and I was on the hustle all the time, so I got the lay of the land pretty well.”
“But, great Scott! why didn’t you ever say anything about it?”
“Never had occasion.”
“Didn’t you meet with any adventures in Paris worth relating?”
“Oh, I met with adventures enough, I assure you.”
“Pleasant adventures?” asked Harry, with a grin and a wink.
“Well, I hardly think they’d be designated as pleasant.”
“Lovely girls, and all that sort of thing?”
“There was one girl concerned.”
“Only one?”
“She was quite enough, under the circumstances. She was an anarchist.”
“Huah!” grunted Bruce.
“Whew!” whistled Harry.
“Jove!” exclaimed Jack.
“I fell in with a New York newspaper reporter, who had been sent over to investigate and write up the recent bomb outrages in this city. Being seen with him, I was spotted by the anarchists, who regarded him as a spy. I was warned to leave France, but didn’t fancy being driven out that way.”
“Well, that was interesting!” ejaculated Diamond.
“Rather!” drawled Bruce.
“It was hot stuff!” said Rattleton.
“It was the night after Grand Prix, the great French horse race, that I received my first warning. It came from a masked woman. Wynne, the reporter, followed her, but she slipped him. On the night after the Grand Prix, all of Paris turns out to enjoy itself and be gay. It was at the Jardin de Paris that I saw her again, in the midst of the mob that was dancing and singing there in the open air. I caught her by the wrist, and she tried to stab me.”
“Whew!” again whistled Rattleton.
“Huah!” once more grunted Browning.
“Jove!” was Diamond’s repeated ejaculation.
“Her friends were on hand to aid her, and she managed to break away, and slip me, as she had Wynne. Afterward, at a place called the Red Flag, I ran across Wynne. Anarchists resorted there, and they tried to stop us both. Wynne got away, but I was roped in. Somebody rapped the senses out of me, and I came to myself in a dungeon-like place, a captive.”
They knew he was telling the truth, for Frank Merriwell never lied, but it dazed them to think he had never mentioned the matter before.
“What happened next?” breathlessly asked Harry.
“The woman, who was known as ‘Mademoiselle Mysterie,’ came there to kill me. I was bound and gagged, and she had a dagger to finish me off. I couldn’t squeal, and so I smiled at her. Then what do you think happened?”
“Can’t guess.”
“You tell.”
“Go on!”
“She fell in love with me,” said Frank quietly.
“What?”
“The deuce!”
“Come off!”
“She did,” nodded Merry, smiling. “She decided not to kill me. She resolved to save me, even though I had been condemned to die by the bomb-throwers, who were convinced that I was dangerous for them. Then, when the real executioner came into the cellar to do the job, she struck him senseless with a stone, and set me free.”
Bruce Browning sat up and stared at Frank.
“I’ll admit that you are the queerest chap alive!” he growled. “You had such an adventure here in Paris, and yet you never told any of us a word about it! Merriwell, I don’t understand you, and I thought I knew you pretty well.”
Now Frank laughed outright.
“I had no occasion to say anything about it, you know.”
“Most fellows would have made an occasion. Supposing the story of that adventure had been known at college. You’d been a kingpin from the very first.”
“Oh, I don’t know about that. You know, a fellow’s record before he enters Yale doesn’t cut much ice there. It’s the record he makes afterward that counts. In almost any other college it is different. A man’s standing amounts to a great deal elsewhere. At Yale, he makes a stand for himself. If he attempts to bolster himself up with tales of what he has done, he is regarded with suspicion and contempt. You know this is true. It is to his direct disadvantage to boast.”
“But it was not necessary for you to boast. You might have told your friends. You never told any of us.”
“Never!” exclaimed Diamond.
“Not a word!” came reproachfully from Rattleton.
“Not even when we were coming here,” growled Browning resentfully.
“Well, I’ve told you now, you know.”
“Not everything,” said Jack eagerly. “Go on. How did you escape?”
“Fought my way out through dynamiters, aided by the woman. The men were in a room where a Russian manufacturer of infernal machines was explaining how his devilish inventions worked. He had all his bombs spread out on a table. I got through that room, and out of the building, and I was lucky. What happened behind me, I can only surmise. It is certain one of those bombs exploded, and it exploded others. The building was wrecked, the anarchists were killed, and among them was found the body of the woman who had saved me, their queen. She is buried at Mont Parnasse, and I paid for the stone that marks her grave.”
Browning struggled to his feet, and stood there, colossal, imposing, outraged, his hands on his hips.
“I have considered you my friend,” he said; “but I feel like punching you now! Why, you even trotted us round all day, and never once mentioned this!”
“I didn’t want to bore you.”
“Bore us—bore us with a yarn like that! Why, it’s exciting enough to furnish a plot for a novel! And you actually passed through such an adventure here in Paris?”
“Didn’t I say so? Do you think I’m drawing the long bow?”
“No, but—”
“But what?”
“It is so remarkable. Why, you came to Yale in the quietest way possible. Anyone might have taken you for a country lad just getting out into the world, for all of anything you had to tell of yourself.”
“What if I had told the story I’ve just related to you? What if I had related a number of yarns about my adventures in various parts of the world? What if I had begun at college by prating of the things I had done?”
“You’d been set down as a howling liar!” exploded Rattleton.
“Exactly,” nodded Merry. “If I had an inclination to speak of such things, I put it aside and kept corked up. You need not set it down as modesty unless you like; you may call it horse sense.”
They talked over Frank’s adventure, just related, for some time, asking him many questions about it, for it was a most fascinating story.
“Those must have been tot old himes—I mean hot old times,” said Rattleton.
“I should say so!” agreed Diamond. “You struck a circus in Paris, and that’s straight! I hardly think anything like that will happen while you are here this time.”
“Not likely,” admitted Merry. “I don’t believe I care about having anything like that happen again. It’s well enough to talk about, but I was rather too near being snuffed out to enjoy it at the time.”
There came a timid knock on the door.
“Come!” called Frank.
The door opened falteringly, and Mr. Maybe, Frank’s tutor, looked in hesitatingly.
“Mr. Merriwell,” he said, “I think you had better retire. You must be tired, and, you know, your studies—”
“Hang it, Mr. Maybe!” exclaimed Merry; “I’m not going to begin cramming again the moment we reach Paris. You must give me two or three days to look round with my friends, and enjoy the sights.”
“You have wasted today, sir, and—”
“Wasted it? No. We’ve taken in the streets, the boulevards, the Seine, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Champs-Élysées, the Bourse, and so forth. Tomorrow, we will visit other places of interest—Versailles, the Trocadero, the Grand Opera House, and perhaps, the Eiffel Tower. There are thousands of beautiful things to be seen in Paris, Mr. Maybe, and I advise you to get out and circulate. It will do you good.”
“You must have been reading the guidebooks, to know so much about Paris,” said Maybe. “I’m going to bed, and I advise you to do the same. Good night.”
He retired, closing the door.
“He doesn’t even dream you ever saw Paris before,” said Rattleton.
“Well,” grunted Browning, from the couch, on which he was stretched once more, “I think I’ll take his advice, and go to bed. I know I shall sleep like a top tonight. I don’t believe an earthquake would disturb me.”
“But your snoring is likely to disturb everybody else on this floor,” declared Rattleton. “I’m glad Merriwell has taken pity on me, and arranged it so I don’t have to sleep with you. You’ll have an entire bed and a whole room to yourself tonight.”
“What a relief that will be!” murmured the big fellow. “How sweetly I will slumber!”
He did not notice that his three companions looked at each other knowingly, while Frank changed a laugh into a choking cough. He did not suspect what was in store for him that night, so he arose, bade good night to the others, and went to his room.
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