I now saw a woman return to the middle of the room. She was draped from head to foot in a brown stuff cloak. Nevertheless I knew her at once. It was Bérangère. I had a feeling not so much of amazement as of sudden and profound pity at the sight of her emaciated face, her poor face, once so bright and eager, now so sad and wan. I did not even think of rejoicing at the fact of her being alive, nor did I ask myself what clandestine business had brought her back to the Lodge. The one thing that held me captive was the painful spectacle of her pallid face, with its feverish, burning eyes and blue eyelids. Her cloak betrayed the shrunken figure beneath it. Her heart must have been beating terribly, for she held her two hands to her breast to suppress its throbbing. She even had to lean on the edge of the table. She staggered and nearly fell. Poor Bérangère. I felt anguish-stricken as I watched her. She pulled herself together, however, and looked around her. Then, with a tottering gait, she went to the mantelpiece, where two old engravings, framed in black with a gold beading, hung one on either side of the looking-glass. She climbed on a chair and took down the one on the right, a portrait of D'Alembert. Stepping down from the chair, she examined the back of the frame, which was closed by a piece of old card-board the edges of which were fastened to the sides of the frame by strips of gummed cloth. Bérangère cut these strips with a pen-knife, bending back the tacks which held the cardboard in position. It came out of the frame; and I then saw--Bérangère had her back turned in my direction, so that not a detail escaped me--I then saw that there was inserted between the cardboard and the engraving a large sheet of paper covered with my uncle's writing. At the top, in red ink, was a drawing of the three geometrical eyes. Next came the following words, in bold black capitals: "Instructions for working my discovery, abridged from the manuscript sent to my nephew." And next forty or fifty very closely-written lines, in a hand too small to allow me to decipher them. Besides, I had not the time. Bérangère merely glanced at the paper. Having found the object of her search and obtained possession of an additional document which my uncle had provided in case the manuscript should be lost, she folded it up, slipped it into her bodice, replaced the cardboard and hung the engraving where she had found it. Was she going away? If so, she was bound to return as she had come, that is to say, evidently, through Noël Dorgeroux's dressing-room, on the other side of the bedroom, of which she had left the communicating-door ajar. I was about to prevent her and had already taken hold of the door-handle, when suddenly she moved a few steps towards my uncle's bed and fell on her knees, stretching out her hands in despair. Her sobs rose in the silence. She stammered words which I was able to catch: "God-father! . . . My poor god-father!"