Ever and anon, pausing in his hasty walk, he stopped suddenly, and drew from his bosom a little piece of paper, carefully folded, which he pressed to his lips with enthusiastic ardor.  Then, unable to restrain the expression of his full happiness, he uttered a full and sonorous cry of joy, and with a bound he was in front of the plate-glass which separated the saloon from the conservatory, in which he had first seen Mdlle. de Cardoville.  By a singular power of remembrance, or marvellous hallucination of a mind possessed by a fixed idea, Djalma had often seen, or fancied he saw, the adored semblance of Adrienne appear to him through this sheet of crystal.  The illusion had been so complete, that, with his eyes ardently fixed on the vision he invoked, he had been able, with the aid of a pencil dipped in carmine, to trace with astonishing exactness, the profile of the ideal countenance which the delirium of his imagination had presented to his view.[42] It was before these delicate lines of bright carmine that Djalma now stood in deep contemplation, after perusing and reperusing, and raising twenty times to his lips, the letter he had received the night before from the hands of Dupont.  Djalma was not alone.  Faringhea watched all the movements of the prince, with a subtle, attentive, and gloomy aspect.  Standing respectfully in a corner of the saloon, the half-caste appeared to be occupied in unfolding and spreading out Djalma’s sash, light, silky Indian web, the brown ground of which was almost entirely concealed by the exquisite gold and silver embroidery with which it was overlaid.

The countenance of the half-caste wore a dark and gloomy expression.  He could not deceive himself.  The letter from Mdlle. de Cardoville, delivered by Dupont to Djalma, must have been the cause of the delight he now experienced, for, without doubt, he knew himself beloved.  In that event, his obstinate silence towards Faringhea, ever since the latter had entered the saloon, greatly alarmed the half-caste, who could not tell what interpretation to put upon it.  The night before, after parting with Dupont, he had hastened, in a state of anxiety easily understood, to look for the prince, in the hope of ascertaining the effect produced by Mdlle. de Cardoville’s letter.  But he found the parlor door closed, and when he knocked, he received no answer from within.  Then, though the night was far advanced, he had dispatched a note to Rodin, in which he informed him of Dupont’s visit and its probable intention.  Djalma had indeed passed the night in a tumult of happiness and hope, and a fever of impatience quite impossible to describe.  Repairing to his bed-chamber only towards the morning, he had taken a few moments of repose, and had then dressed himself without assistance.