“Hang it all! I wouldn’t give up this box on the first tier for an Empire,” he murmured. “What hot stuff they are! They talk about murdering as other people talk about putting on a clean collar.” Above all Godfrey d’Etigues astonished him. How could the gentle Clarice be the daughter of this gloomy soul? What end was he trying to compass? What were the dark motives on which he was acting? Hate, greed, the lust for revenge, the instinct of cruelty? He brought to one’s mind an executioner of bygone days ready to set about some sinister task. His brick-red face and red beard seemed to be lit up by internal flames. Then three other guests arrived together. Ralph knew them as frequent visitors at La Haie d’Etigues. They sat down with their backs to the two windows which lighted the chamber as if they desired their faces to be blurred in the shadow. On the very stroke of four two newcomers entered. One, a man of considerable age and of a soldierly stiffness, tightly buttoned up in a frock coat and wearing on his chin the little beard which in the days of Napoleon III was called an imperial, stopped short on the threshold. Everyone rose and stepped forward to greet the other. Ralph did not doubt for a moment that he was the author of the unsigned letter, the man for whom they were waiting, whom the Baron had called Beaumagnan. Although he was the only one of them to have no title, nor even the “de” before his name, they welcomed him as one welcomes a leader, with a respect which his air of domination and his imperious eyes seemed naturally to exact. His face was clean-shaven; his cheeks were hollow; there was in the glances of his fine black eyes a quality of passion. In his manner and in his dress there was something severe, even ascetic; he had the air of a dignitary of the Church. He begged them to sit down, apologized for having been unable to bring his friend the Count de Brie, beckoned his companion forward and introduced him: “The Prince of Arcola.... I believe you know that the Prince of Arcola is one of us, but, as luck would have it, was unable to be present at our meetings and that his activities were exercised at a distance and with the happiest results. To-day his evidence is necessary to us, since twice already, in eighteen-seventy, he met the infernal creature who threatens us.” Ralph was conscious of a slight disappointment; working it out, the “infernal creature” must be more than fifty years of age, since her meetings with the Prince of Arcola had taken place two and twenty years before. Thereupon the Prince sat down beside Oscar de Bennetot; and Beaumagnan drew Godfrey d’Etigues aside. The Baron handed him an envelope, containing doubtless the compromising letter. Then they held in low voices a discussion of a certain liveliness, which Beaumagnan cut short with a gesture of virile command.