I went up to him, therefore, with the half-bored face of an author interrupted in one of those moments of sorest self-mistrust, while I found him so pale and haggard that the first words I addressed to him were these: “What is the matter? What has happened to you?” “Oh! Let me take breath,” said he. “I’m going to tell you all about it, besides, it’s a dream perhaps, or perhaps I am mad.” He threw himself into an armchair, and let his head drop between his hands. I looked at him in astonishment; his hair was dripping with rain; his shoes, his knees, and the bottom of his trousers were covered with mud. I went to the window; I saw at the door his servant and his cabriolet; I could make nothing out of it all. He saw my surprise. “I have been to the cemetery of Père-Lachaise,” said he. “At ten o’clock in the morning?” “I was there at seven--cursed bal masqué!” I could not imagine what a bal masqué and Père-Lachaise had to do with one another. I resigned myself, and turning my back to the mantelpiece began to roll a cigarette for him between my fingers with the phlegm and the patience of a Spaniard. While he was coming to the point I hinted to Anthony that I, for my part, was commonly very susceptible to attentions of that kind. He made me a sign of thanks, but pushed my hand away. Finally I bent over to light the cigarette for myself: Anthony stopped me. “Alexandre,” he said to me, “Listen, I beg of you.” “But you have been here already a quarter of an hour and have not told me anything.” “Oh! it is a most strange adventure.” I got up, placed my cigarette on the mantelpiece and crossed my arms like a man resigned; only I began to believe, as he did, that he was fast becoming mad. “You remember the ball at the Opera, where I met you?” he said to me after a moment’s silence. “The last one where there were at least two hundred people?”