place he noticed at his feet a letter which must have fallen from the
unknown beggar when he took, as the baron had seen him take, a
handkerchief from his pocket. The young man picked it up, and read,
involuntarily, the address: "To Monsieur Ferragusse, Rue des
Grands-Augustains, corner of rue Soly."

The letter bore no postmark, and the address prevented Monsieur de
Maulincour from following the beggar and returning it; for there are
few passions that will not fail in rectitude in the long run. The
baron had a presentiment of the opportunity afforded by this windfall.
He determined to keep the letter, which would give him the right to
enter the mysterious house to return it to the strange man, not
doubting that he lived there. Suspicions, vague as the first faint
gleams of daylight, made him fancy relations between this man and
Madame Jules. A jealous lover supposes everything; and it is by
supposing everything and selecting the most probable of their
conjectures that judges, spies, lovers, and observers get at the truth
they are looking for.

"Is the letter for him? Is it from Madame Jules?"

His restless imagination tossed a thousand such questions to him; but
when he read the first words of the letter he smiled. Here it is,
textually, in all the simplicity of its artless phrases and its
miserable orthography,--a letter to which it would be impossible to
add anything, or to take anything away, unless it were the letter
itself. But we have yielded to the necessity of punctuating it. In the
original there were neither commas nor stops of any kind, not even
notes of exclamation,--a fact which tends to undervalue the system of
notes and dashes by which modern authors have endeavored to depict the