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Archibald Malmaison by Julian Hawthorne
page 7 of 116 (06%)
into an ornamental fish-pond, and drowned there before her attendants
missed her. She was buried with much stateliness; but it is to be feared
that few persons missed her even then. She left no children.

Was poor old Jane the first member of the Malmaison line who had shown any
special weakness or peculiarity in the upper story? There was a hoary
tradition to the effect that the son or grandson of the first emigrant had
made some compact or other with the Evil One, the terms of which were that
he (the grandson) was to prolong his terrestrial existence for one hundred
and forty years by the ingenious device of living only every alternate
seven years, the intervening periods to be passed in a sort of
hibernation. In return for this accommodation he was, of course, to make
H.S.M. the usual acknowledgment!

The final upshot of this bargain--as is usually the way in these cases--is
not known. Did the worthy gentleman work his way into his third half
century? And had he, by that time, acquired astuteness sufficient to cheat
the other party to the contract of his due? History is silent; the only
thing asserted with any appearance of confidence is that Sir Eustace de
Malmaison possessed the power of vanishing at will from the eyes of men.
Nay, he would seem to have bequeathed this useful accomplishment to
certain of his descendants; for there is among the family documents a
curious narrative, signed and witnessed, describing how a member of the
family, in the time (I think) of the Second Pretender, did, being hard
pressed by the minions of the German Prince, and pursued by them into the
extreme eastern chamber of his house of Malmaison, suddenly and without
warning render himself invisible, insomuch that nothing of him remained
save his dagger, and the plume which he bore in his cap. This eastern
chamber had, at the time, but one outlet, and that was into a room already
guarded by the soldiery.
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