g the boulevard; and, at the same time, I had
an impression that the light of a new day was trying to steal through
the closed window-blinds.

At last, daylight penetrated the room; other vehicles passed along the
boulevard; and all the phantoms of the night vanished. Then I put one
arm out of the bed, slowly and cautiously. My eyes were fixed upon the
curtain, locating the exact spot at which I must fire; I made an exact
calculation of the movements I must make; then, quickly, I seized my
revolver and fired.

I leaped from my bed with a cry of deliverance, and rushed to the
window. The bullet had passed through the curtain and the window-glass,
but it had not touched the man--for the very good reason that there was
none there. Nobody! Thus, during the entire night, I had been
hypnotized by a fold of the curtain. And, during that time, the
malefactors....Furiously, with an enthusiasm that nothing could have
stopped, I turned the key, opened the door, crossed the antechamber,
opened another door, and rushed into the library. But amazement stopped
me on the threshold, panting, astounded, more astonished than I had
been by the absence of the man. All the things that I supposed had been
stolen, furniture, books, pictures, old tapestries, everything was in
its proper place.

It was incredible. I could not believe my eyes. Notwithstanding that
uproar, those noises of removal....I made a tour, I inspected the walls,
I made a mental inventory of all the familiar objects. Nothing was
missing. And, what was more disconcerting, there was no clue to the
intruders, not a sign, not a chair disturbed, not the trace of a
footstep.

"Well! Well!" I said to myself, pressing my hands on my bewildered head,
"surely I am not crazy! I hear something!"

Inch by inch, I made a careful examination of the room. It was in vain.
Unless I could consider this as a discovery: Under a small Persian rug,
I found a card--an ordinary playing card. It was the seven of hearts;
it was like any other seven of hearts in French playing-cards, with this
slight but curious exception: The extreme point of each of the seven red
spots or hearts was pierced by a hole, round and regular as if made with
the point of an awl.

Nothing more. A card and a letter found in a book. But was not that
sufficient to affirm that I had not been the plaything of a dream?

* * * * *

Throughout the day, I continued my searches in the library. It was a
large room, much too