is now
January 30th, and I am still alive and able to write. I wish I weren't.
But I will set down as plainly as I can what has happened in the
interval.

I had just written the last word, seated at my hotel window in the
sunshine, and enjoying, in spite of my uncheerful thoughts, the scents
that rose from the garden, when I heard a knock at my door. At my
invitation to enter, Anastasius Papadopoulos trotted into the room in a
great state of excitement carrying the familiar bunch of papers. He put
his hat on the floor, pitched the papers into the hat, and ran up to me.

"My dear sir, don't get up, I implore you. And I won't sit down. I have
just seen the ever beautiful and beloved lady."

I turned my chair away from the table, and faced him as he stood blowing
kisses with one little hand, while the other lay on his heart. In a
flash he struck a new gesture; he folded his arms and scowled.

"I was with her. She was opening her inmost heart to me. She knows I
am her champion. A servant came up announcing Monsieur Vauvenarde.
She dismissed me. I have come to my patron and friend, the English
statesman. Her husband is with her now."

I smiled. "Madame Brandt told me that she had asked for an interview."

"And you allow it? You allow her to contaminate her beautiful presence
with the sight of that traitor, that cheat at cards, that murderer, that
devil? Ah, but I will not have it! I am her champion. I will save her. I
will save you. I will take you both away to Egypt, and surround you with
my beautiful cats, and fan you with peacock's feathers."

This was sheer crackedness of brain. For the first time I feared for the
little man. When people begin to talk that way they are not allowed to
go about loose. He went on talking and the three languages he used in
his jargon got clotted to the point of unintelligibility. He spoke very
fast and, as far as I could understand, poured abuse on the head of
Captain Vauvenarde, and continued to declare himself Lola's champion
and my devoted friend. He stamped up and down the room in his tightly
buttoned frock-coat from the breastpocket of which peeped the fingers of
his yellow dogskin gloves. At last he stopped, and drawing a chair near
the window perched on it with a little hop like a child. He held out his
hand.

"Do you believe I am your friend?"

"I am sure of it, my dear Professor."

"Then I'll betray a sacred confidence. The _carissima signora_ loves
you. You didn't know