"You don't know what you're talking about, Madame Dupont." And I hastily put the cross in my pocket, to hide it from the glances of that accursed concierge, who, finding that I no longer replied to her, talked on all alone, in order to keep the conversation alive. "They say the girl was very pretty, and that she was crying! That's a strange thing." "What girl are you talking about?" "A little thing--a sort of--faith! I don't know just what she was, for I didn't see her. To be sure, she passed my lodge, but she went by so quick! brrr! like a bomb!" "Who told you anything about her?" "Madame Martin, Madame Bertin's cook, who saw her when she went downstairs to get her milk." "Where did the girl come from?" "Oh!--I--they--that is--I don't know anything about it, monsieur." The tone in which Madame Dupont told me that she knew nothing satisfied me that she did know a great deal. Raymond had probably tattled to Madame Martin, and she to the concierge. And then the couch, and the gilt cross: I had certainly become the byword of the whole house! Madame Bertin would undoubtedly be the first one to hear about it, and Madame Bertin was the mother of two pretty daughters, whose esteem I was most anxious to retain. And yet it was a generous action, a sublime action when performed by a young man, which was likely to injure me in the opinion of many people. Ah! how untrustworthy are appearances! I was about to put an end to the chatter of my concierge by leaving my lodgings, when she detained me. "By the way, monsieur, I beg your pardon--I quite forgot--I have something for you." "What is it, pray?" "I had entirely forgotten it; that girl is on my brain. It's a letter." "A letter! who gave it to you?" "The postman, monsieur; he brought it last night; you'd gone out, and when you came home it was very late and I was in bed; for I couldn't even see you, and that's how it was that----" "Morbleu! Madame Dupont, give me the letter, and spare me your reflections!" "Here it is, monsieur." I recognized the postmark and the handwriting: it was from my sister, my dear Amélie. But that reminds me that I ought to have told you before this who I am, where I come from, and what my business is. I confess that it never occurred to me; indeed, I should have been quite capable of going on to the end without giving you any further information, and my adventures would have been none the less simple in your eyes; for as I have not to tell of mysteries, murders, abductions, substitution of children,--which always produces an excellent effect,--promenades in the galleries of the West, visits to subterranean caverns, moonlight visions, encounters in murky caves, etc., etc., I shall have nothing to explain or disentangle for my dénouement, and shall be constrained, in all probability, to end as simply as I began.