But of a sudden a door opened somewhere, and a step rang out, accompanied by the jangle of spurs, and with it came a sharp, unpleasant voice calling for its owner's horse. There was a familiar sound in those shrill accents that caused me to thrust my head through the casement. But I was quick to withdraw it, as I recognised in the gaily dressed little fellow below my old friend Malpertuis.
I know not what impulse made me draw back so suddenly. The action was as much the child of instinct as of the lately acquired habit of concealing my face from the gaze of all who were likely to spread abroad the news that I still lived.
From behind my curtains I watched Malpertuis ride out of the yard, saying, in answer to a parting question of the landlord, who had come upon the scene, that he would breakfast at Beaugency.
Then, as he rode down the street, he of a sudden raised his discordant voice and sang to the accompaniment of his horse's hoofs. And the burden of his song ran thus: A frondeur wind Got up to-day, 'Gainst Mazarin It blows, they say.
I listened in amazement to his raven's voice.
Whither was he bound, I asked myself, and whence a haste that made him set out fasting, with an anti-cardinalist ditty on his lips, and ride two leagues to seek a breakfast in a village that did not hold an inn where a dog might be housed in comfort?
Like Eugène de Canaples, he also travelled towards a goal that he little dreamt of. And so albeit the one went south and the other north, these two men were, between them, drawing together the thread of this narrative of mine, as anon you shall learn.
We reached Paris at dusk three days later, and we went straight to my old lodging in the Rue St. Antoine.
Coupri started and gasped upon beholding me, and not until I had cursed him for a fool in a voice that was passing human would he believe that I was no ghost. He too had heard the rumour of my death.
I dispatched Michelot to the Palais Royal, where--without permitting his motive to transpire--he was to ascertain for me whether M. de Montrésor was in Paris, whether he still dwelt at the Hôtel des Cloches, and at what hour he could be found there.
Whilst he was away I went up to my room, and there I found a letter which Coupri informed me had been left by a lackey a month ago--before the report that I had been killed had reached Paris--and since lain forgotten. It was a delicate note, to which still hung the ghost of a perfume; there were no arms on the seal, but the writing I took to be that of my aunt, the Duchesse de Chevreuse, and vaguely marvelling what motive she could have had for communicating with me, I cut the silk.