“I hardly dare tell you the truth, and yet my conscience will give me no relief until I do so.  I can no longer bear to see a gentleman such as you are deceived by a woman who has no heart or honorable feeling.  Your wife is unfaithful to you, and will soon make you a laughing stock to all.  You may trust to this being true, for I am a respectable woman, and you can easily find out if I am lying to you.  Hide yourself this evening, so that you may command a view of the side-door in the wall of your garden, and between half-past ten and eleven you will see your wife’s lover enter.  It is a long time since he has been furnished with a key.  The hour for the meeting has been judiciously fixed, for all the servants will be out; but I implore you not to be violent, for I would not do your wife any harm, but I feel that you ought to be warned.

“From one

“Who knows.”

Norbert ran through the contents of this infamous anonymous letter in an instant.  The blood surged madly through his brain, and he uttered a howl of fury.  His servants ran in to see what was the matter.

“Where is the fellow who brought this letter?” said he.  “Run after him and bring him back to me.”

In a few minutes the sturdy grooms made their appearance, pushing in the messenger, who seemed over-powered with tears.

“I am not a thief,” exclaimed he.  “It was given to me, but I will give it back.”

He was alluding to the louis given to him by Norbert, for the largeness of the sum made him think that the donor had made a mistake.

“Keep the money,” said the Duke; “I meant it for you; but tell me who gave this letter to you.”

“I can’t tell you,” answered the man.  “If I ever saw him before, may my next glass of wine choke me.  He got out of a cab just as I was passing near the bridge, and calling to me, said, ’Look at this letter; at half-past seven take it to the Duke de Champdoce, who lives by his stables in the road to the Forest.  Do you know the place?’ ‘Yes,’ I says, and then he slips the letter and a five-franc piece into my hand, got back into the cab, and off he went.”

“What was the man like?” asked he.

“Well, I can hardly say.  He wasn’t young or old, or short or tall.  I recollect he had a gold watch-chain on, but that was about all I noticed.”

“Very well; you can be off.”

At this moment Norbert’s anger was turned against the writer of the letter only, for he did not place the smallest credence in the accusations against his wife.  If he did not love her, he at any rate respected her.  “My wife,” said he to himself, “is an honorable and virtuous woman, and it is some discharged menial who has taken this cowardly mode of revenge.”  A closer inspection of the letter seemed to show him that the faults in caligraphy were intentional.  The concluding portion of the letter excited his attention, and, calling Jean, he asked him if it was true that all the servants would be absent from the house to-day.