Joan Becomes the Victim of Circumstances

Showing How the King Kept His Appointment

Wherein the Shadows Deepen

Joan Decides

The Storm Breaks

Wherein a Reason Is Given for Joan's Flight

The Broken Treaty

The Envoy

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

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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 Progrès"; for Joan was an artist, not a philosopher.

O

n

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 [Pg 2]Mich, which roared a few yards away. Its luminous sign, a 

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