I am against the panel, which I take care not to touch, and I put my
eyes close to one of the holes.

There is a man in the box, and it is not the Austrian tailor, Zeitung!
Thank Heaven! I will soon make him my No. 11.

The man's features I can make out clearly. He is from twenty-five to
twenty-six years of age. He does not shave, and his beard is brown. He
is of the true Roumanian type, and that confirms me in my notion
regarding his Roumanian correspondent. He is good-looking, although his
face denotes great energy of character, and he must be energetic to
have shut himself up in a box like this for such a long journey. But if
he has nothing of the malefactor about him, I must confess that he does
not look like the hero I am in search of as the chief personage in my
story.

After all, they were not heroes, that Austrian and that Spaniard who
traveled in their packing cases. They were young men, very simple, very
ordinary, and yet they yielded columns of copy. And so this brave No.
11, with amplifications, antonyms, diaphoreses, epitases, tropes,
metaphors, and other figures of that sort, I will beat out, I will
enlarge, I will develop--as they develop a photographic negative.

Besides to travel in a box from Tiflis to Pekin is quite another affair
than traveling from Vienna or Barcelona to Paris, as was done by
Zeitung, Erres and Flora Anglora.

I add that I will not betray my Roumanian; I will report him to no one.
He may rely on my discretion; he may reckon on my good offices if I can
be of use to him when he is found out.