" A third stumble was followed by a round German oath. How
easy it is for me now to fill up the little blanks which that unhappy
pavement caused!
"You share your receipts with this butler. On the day I obtain it," he
added, and I now perceived his foreign accent, "I hand you one hundred
thousand francs; afterward, monthly payments till you have received the
stipulated sum. But how will this butler know me, in season to prevent a
mistake? Hem!--he might give it to the other!"
My hearing had been trained to such a degree that I would have promised
to overhear any given dialogue of the spirits themselves, but the
whisper that answered him eluded me. I caught nothing but a faint
sibillation. "Your ring?" was the rejoinder. "He shall be instructed to
recognize it? Very well. It is too large,--no, that will do, it fits the
first finger. There is nothing more. I am under infinite obligations,
Sir; they shall be remembered. Adieu!"
The two parted; which should I pursue? In desperation I turned my
lantern upon one, and illumined a face fresh with color, whose black
eyes sparkled askance after the retreating figure, under straight black
brows. In a moment more he was lost in a false _cul-de-sac_, and I found
it impossible to trace the other.
I was scarcely better off than before; but it seemed to me that I had
obtained something, and that now it was wisest to work this vein. "The
butler of Madame----." There were hundreds of thousands of Madames in
town.
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