Queen of the jesters, and her strange adventures in old Paris

"Queen of the jesters, and her strange adventures in old Paris" by Max Pemberton is a historical adventure novel written in the late 19th century. It follows Corinne de Montesson, a dazzling philanthropist and daredevil of Louis XV’s Paris, as she moves between salons and slums, mastering plots that tangle rogues, scholars, and the police. Expect swift capers, clever deceptions, and moral reckonings as Corinne aids the wretched, spars with the Lieutenant of Police, and rules an unruly city with wit and nerve. The opening of the novel introduces a starving newcomer, Ferdinand Dauberval, who seeks help at Corinne’s Hôtel Beautreillis, is fed and refitted, then tested: when he steals a diamond cross from his bedroom shrine, Corinne springs a silent trap, her hound drops him, and a maze sends him running in terror until dawn; stripped of the jewel and his pretensions, he is dismissed from Paris. The scene shifts to the highwayman Coq le Roi, who escapes a police raid through a well-tunnel with aid from a masked ally, sparking street cheers. Meanwhile Sartines, the new Lieutenant of Police, is wined and thoroughly outplayed at Corinne’s house: her “astrologer” narrates Coq le Roi’s day, Sartines views the “prisoner” asleep (a ruse), and even a royal note ties the outlaw’s liberty to stealing Sartines’s ring. Pursuing clarity to Versailles, Sartines meets a laughing young rider in green velvet who reveals Corinne’s theatrics and then, with a final flourish, hints that she herself is the disguised highwayman, leaving the chase and the joke squarely on him.

Summary written by Project Gutenberg, by machine.