In short, this idea—­round which I am making you circle because I cannot bring myself to let you enter it—­here it is, in all its crudity; I am afraid of being, without my knowledge, the agent, the tool of those associations of false coiners who are known in criminal records to concoct schemes as complicated and mysterious as the one I am now involved in, in order to put into circulation the money they coin.  In all such cases you will find great coming and going of accomplices; cheques drawn from a distance on the bankers in great commercial centres like Paris, Stockholm, Rotterdam.  Often one hears of poor dupes compromised.  In short, do you not see in the mysterious ways of this Bricheteau something like an imitation, a reflection of the manoeuvres to which these criminal workers are forced to have recourse, arranging them with a talent and a richness of imagination to which a novelist can scarcely attain?

One thing is certain:  there is about me a thick unwholesome atmosphere, in which I feel that air is lacking and I cannot breathe.  However, assure me, if you can, persuade me, I ask no better, that this is all an empty dream.  But in any case I am determined to have a full explanation with these two men to-morrow, and to obtain, although so late, more light than they have yet doled out to me. . . .

Another and yet stranger fact!  As I wrote those last words, a noise of horses’ hoofs came from the street.  Distrustful now of everything, I opened my window, and in the dawning light I saw a travelling carriage before the door of the inn, the postilion in the saddle, and Jacques Bricheteau talking to some one who was seated in the vehicle.  Deciding quickly on my action, I ran rapidly downstairs; but before I reached the bottom I heard the roll of wheels and the cracking of the postilion’s whip.  At the foot of the staircase I came face to face with Jacques Bricheteau.  Without seeming embarrassed, in fact with the most natural air in the world, he said to me,—­

“What! my dear ward already up?”

“Of course; the least I could do was to say farewell to my excellent father.”

“He did not wish it,” replied that damned musician, with an imperturbability and phlegm that deserved a thrashing; “he feared the emotions of parting.”

“Is he so dreadfully hurried that he could not even give a day to his new and ardent paternity?”

“The truth is, he is an original; what he came to do, he has done; after that, to his mind, there is nothing to stay for.”

“Ah!  I understand; he hastens to those high functions he performs at that Northern court!”

Jacques Bricheteau could no longer mistake the ironical tone in which these words were said.

“Until now,” he said, “you have shown more faith.”

“Yes; but I confess that faith begins to stagger under the weight of the mysteries with which it is loaded down without relief.”