Any one observing Gwynplaine walk would have said, “See!—­a drunken man!”

He almost staggered under the weight of his own heart, of spring, and of the night.

The solitude in the bowling-green was so peaceful that at times he spoke aloud.  The consciousness that there is no listener induces speech.

He walked with slow steps, his head bent down, his hands behind him, the left hand in the right, the fingers open.

Suddenly he felt something slipped between his fingers.

He turned round quickly.

In his hand was a paper, and in front of him a man.

It was the man who, coming behind him with the stealth of a cat, had placed the paper in his fingers.

The paper was a letter.

The man, as he appeared pretty clearly in the starlight, was small, chubby-cheeked, young, sedate, and dressed in a scarlet livery, exposed from top to toe through the opening of a long gray cloak, then called a capenoche, a Spanish word contracted; in French it was cape-de-nuit.  His head was covered by a crimson cap, like the skull-cap of a cardinal, on which servitude was indicated by a strip of lace.  On this cap was a plume of tisserin feathers.  He stood motionless before Gwynplaine, like a dark outline in a dream.

Gwynplaine recognized the duchess’s page.

Before Gwynplaine could utter an exclamation of surprise, he heard the thin voice of the page, at once childlike and feminine in its tone, saying to him,—­

“At this hour to-morrow, be at the corner of London Bridge.  I will be there to conduct you—­”

“Whither?” demanded Gwynplaine.

“Where you are expected.”

Gwynplaine dropped his eyes on the letter, which he was holding mechanically in his hand.

When he looked up the page was no longer with him.

He perceived a vague form lessening rapidly in the distance.  It was the little valet.  He turned the corner of the street, and solitude reigned again.

Gwynplaine saw the page vanish, then looked at the letter.  There are moments in our lives when what happens seems not to happen.  Stupor keeps us for a moment at a distance from the fact.

Gwynplaine raised the letter to his eyes, as if to read it, but soon perceived that he could not do so for two reasons—­first, because he had not broken the seal; and, secondly, because it was too dark.

It was some minutes before he remembered that there was a lamp at the inn.  He took a few steps sideways, as if he knew not whither he was going.

A somnambulist, to whom a phantom had given a letter, might walk as he did.

At last he made up his mind.  He ran rather than walked towards the inn, stood in the light which broke through the half-open door, and by it again examined the closed letter.  There was no design on the seal, and on the envelope was written, “To Gwynplaine.”  He broke the seal, tore the envelope, unfolded the letter, put it directly under the light, and read as follows:—­