At this moment, as he was leaning his head out of the carriage window, a drop of blood trickled down his cheek. “Well! Good-bye to my portmanteau! It can’t be helped! The throw said I wasn’t to get out here. It was right.” He shut the door and sat down again. “There were no papers in my portmanteau and my linen isn’t marked. What are the risks?... No matter, I’d better sail as soon as possible; it’ll be a little less amusing perhaps, but a good deal wiser.” In the meantime the train started again. “It’s not so much my portmanteau that I regret as my beaver, which I really should have liked to retrieve. Well! let’s think no more about it.” He filled another pipe, lit it, and then, plunging his hand into the inside pocket of Fleurissoire’s coat, pulled out: a letter from Arnica, a Cook’s ticket and a large yellow envelope, which he opened. “Three, four, five, six thousand-franc notes! Of no interest to honest folk!” He returned the notes to the envelope and the envelope to the coat pocket. But when, a moment later, he examined the Cook’s ticket, Lafcadio’s brain whirled. On the first page was written the name of _Julius de Baraglioul_. “Am I going mad?” he asked himself. “What can he have had to do with Julius?... A stolen ticket?... No, not possible!... a borrowed ticket ... must be. Lord! Lord! Perhaps I’ve made a mess of it. These old gentlemen are sometimes better connected than one thinks....” Then, his fingers trembling with eagerness, he opened Arnica’s letter. The circumstances seemed too strange; he found it difficult to fix his attention; he failed, no doubt, to make out the exact relationship existing between Julius and the old gentleman, but, at any rate, he managed to grasp that Julius was in Rome. His mind was made up at once; an urgent desire to see his brother possessed him--an unbridled curiosity to find out what kind of repercussion this affair would set up in that calm and logical mind. “That’s settled. I shall sleep to-night at Naples, get out my trunk, and to-morrow morning return by the first train to Rome. It will certainly be a good deal less wise, but perhaps a little more amusing.” III At Naples Lafcadio went to a hotel near the station; he made a point of taking his trunk with him, because travellers without luggage are looked at askance, and because he was anxious not to attract attention; then he went out to buy a few necessary articles of toilette and another hat instead of the odious straw (beside which, it was too tight) which Fleurissoire had left him. He wanted to buy a revolver as well, but was obliged to put this purchase off, as the shops were already shutting. The train he took next day started early, arriving in Rome in time for lunch.