or the one or for the other and if Mme. la Comtesse de Nole was now
waiting to clasp her pet dog or my man-of-all-work to her exquisite
bosom.

She in the meanwhile had received a second, yet more peremptory,
missive through the same channel as the previous one. A grimy deformed
man, with ginger-coloured hair, and wearing a black patch over one
eye, had been seen by one of the servants lolling down the street
where Madame lived, and subsequently the concierge discovered that an
exceedingly dirty scrap of paper had been thrust under the door of his
lodge. The writer of the epistle demanded that Mme. la Comtesse should
stand in person at six o'clock that same evening at the corner of the
Rue Guenegaud, behind the Institut de France. Two men, each wearing a
blue blouse and peaked cap, would meet her there. She must hand over
the money to one of them, whilst the other would have Carissimo in his
arms. The missive closed with the usual threats that if the police
were mixed up in the affair, or the money not forthcoming, Carissimo
would be destroyed.

Six o'clock was the hour fixed by these abominable thieves for the
final doom of Carissimo. It was now close on five. In a little more
than an hour my last hope of five or ten thousand francs and a smile
of gratitude from a pair of lovely lips would have gone, never again
to return. A great access of righteous rage seized upon me. I
determined that those miserable thieves, whoever they were, should
suffer for the disappointment which I was now enduring. If I was to
lose five thousand francs, they at least should not be left free to
pursue their evil ways. I would communicate with the police; the
police should meet the miscreants at the corner of the Rue Guenegaud.
Carissimo would die; his lovely mistress would be brokenhearted. I
would be left to mourn yet another illusion of a possible fortune, but
they would suffer in gaol or in New Caledonia the consequences of all
their misdeeds.

Fortified by this resolution, I turned my weary footsteps in the
direction of the gendarmerie where I intended to lodge my denunciation
of those abominable thieves and blackmailers. The night was dark, the
streets ill-lighted, the air bitterly cold. A thin drizzle, half rain,
half snow, was descending, chilling me to the bone.

I was walking rapidly along the river bank with my coat collar pulled
up to my ears, and still instinctively peering up every narrow street
which debouches on the quay.