No. 252 Rue M. le Prince
Ralph Adams Cram
"When
in May, 1886, I found myself at last in Paris, I naturally determined to throw myself on the
charity of an old chum of mine, Eugene Marie d’Ardeche, who had forsaken Boston a year or
more ago on receiving word of the death of
an aunt who had left him such property as she
possessed. I fancy this windfall surprised him not a little, for the relations between the aunt and
nephew had never been cordial, judging from Eugene’s remarks touching the lady, who was, it
seems, a more or
less wicked and witch-like old person, with a penchant for black magic, at least
such was the common report.
"Why she should leave all her property to d’Ardeche, no one could tell, unless it was that she felt
his rather hobbledehoy tendencies towards Buddhism and occultism might some day lead him to
her own unhallowed height of questionable illumination. To be sure d’Ardeche reviled her as a
bad old woman, being himself in that state of enthusiastic exaltation which sometimes
accompanies a boyish fancy for occultism; but in spite of his distant and repellent attitude, Mlle.
Blaye de Tartas made him her sole heir, to the violent wrath of a questionable old party known to
infamy as the Sar Torrevieja, the 'King of the Sorcerers.' This malevolent old portent, whose
gray and crafty face was often seen in the Rue M. le Prince during the life of Mlle. de Tartas had,
it seems, fully expected to enjoy her small wealth after her death; and when it appeared that she
had left him only the contents of the gloomy old house
in the Quartier Latin, giving the house
itself and all else of which she died possessed to her nephew in America, the Sar proceeded to
remove everything from the place, and then to curse it elaborately and comprehensively, together
with all those who should ever dwell therein.
"Whereupon he disappeared.
"This final episode was the last word I received from Eugene, but I knew the number of the house,
252 Rue M. le Prince. So, after a day or two given to a first cursory survey of Paris, I started
across the Seine to find Eugene and compel him to do the honors of the city.
"Every one who knows the Latin Quarter knows the Rue M. le Prince, running up the hill towards
the Garden of the Luxembourg. It is full of queer houses and odd corners,—or was in ’86,—and
certainly No. 252 was, when I found it, quite as queer as any. It was nothing but a doorway, a
black arch of old stone between and under two new houses painted yellow. The effect of this bit
of seventeenth-century masonry, with its dirty old doors, and rusty broken lantern sticking gaunt
and grim out over the narrow sidewalk, was, in its frame of fresh plaster, sinister in the extreme.
"I wondered if I had made a mistake in the number; it was quite evident that no one lived behind
those cobwebs. I went into the doorway of one of the new hôtels and interviewed the concierge.
"No, M. d’Ardeche did not live there, though to be sure he owned the mansion; he himself resided
in Meudon, in the country house of the late Mlle. de Tartas. Would Monsieur like the number
and the street?
"Monsieur would like them extremely, so I took the card that the concierge wrote for me, and
forthwith started for the river, in order that I might take a steamboat for Meudon. By one of those
coincidences which happen so often, being quite inexplicable, I had not gone twenty paces down
the street before I ran directly into the arms of Eugene d’Ardeche. In three minutes we were
sitting in the queer little garden of the Chien Bleu, drinking vermouth and absinthe, and talking it
all over." . . .
