odor, or that he had in his normal condition the “poor smell” which belongs to Parisian tenements, just as offices, sacristies, and hospitals have their own peculiar and rancid fetidness, of which no words can give the least idea, or whether some other reason affected them, those in the vicinity of this man immediately moved away and left him alone.  He cast upon them and also upon the officer a calm, expressionless look, the celebrated look of Monsieur de Talleyrand, a dull, wan glance, without warmth, a species of impenetrable veil, beneath which a strong soul hides profound emotions and close estimation of men and things and events.  Not a fold of his face quivered.  His mouth and forehead were impassible; but his eyes moved and lowered themselves with a noble, almost tragic slowness.  There was, in fact, a whole drama in the motion of those withered eyelids.

The aspect of this stoical figure gave rise in Monsieur de Maulincour to one of those vagabond reveries which begin with a common question and end by comprising a world of thought.  The storm was past.  Monsieur de Maulincour presently saw no more of the man than the tail of his coat as it brushed the gate-post, but as he turned to leave his own place he noticed at his feet a letter which must have fallen from the unknown beggar when he took, as the baron had seen him take, a handkerchief from his pocket.  The young man picked it up, and read, involuntarily, the address:  “To Monsieur Ferragusse, Rue des Grands-Augustains, corner of rue Soly.”

The letter bore no postmark, and the address prevented Monsieur de Maulincour from following the beggar and returning it; for there are few passions that will not fail in rectitude in the long run.  The baron had a presentiment of the opportunity afforded by this windfall.  He determined to keep the letter, which would give him the right to enter the mysterious house to return it to the strange man, not doubting that he lived there.  Suspicions, vague as the first faint gleams of daylight, made him fancy relations between this man and Madame Jules.  A jealous lover supposes everything; and it is by supposing everything and selecting the most probable of their conjectures that judges, spies, lovers, and observers get at the truth they are looking for.

“Is the letter for him?  Is it from Madame Jules?”

His restless imagination tossed a thousand such questions to him; but when he read the first words of the letter he smiled.  Here it is, textually, in all the simplicity of its artless phrases and its miserable orthography,—­a letter to which it would be impossible to add anything, or to take anything away, unless it were the letter itself.  But we have yielded to the necessity of punctuating it.  In the original there were neither commas nor stops of any kind, not even notes of exclamation,—­a fact which tends to undervalue the system of notes and dashes by which modern authors have endeavored to depict the great disasters of all the passions:—­