"I suppose so, for I have been dreaming. Ha! I hear the door-bell.
I am wide awake now."

The porter left him, and in a few minutes conducted into the salon two
men wrapped in cloaks, despite the warmth of the summer night. Lebeau
shook hands with them silently, and not less silently they laid aside
their cloaks and seated themselves. Both these men appeared to belong to
the upper section of the middle class. One, strongly built, with a keen
expression of countenance, was a surgeon considered able in his
profession, but with limited practice, owing to a current suspicion
against his honour in connection with a forged will. The other, tall,
meagre, with long grizzled hair and a wild unsettled look about the eyes,
was a man of science; had written works well esteemed upon mathematics
and electricity, also against the existence of any other creative power
than that which he called "nebulosity," and defined to be the combination
of heat and moisture. The surgeon was about the age of forty, the
atheist a few years older. In another minute or so, a knock was heard
against the wall. One of the men rose and touched a spring in the panel,
which then flew back, and showed an opening upon a narrow stair, by
which, one after the other, entered three other members of the society.
Evidently there was more than one mode of ingress and exit.

The three new-comers were not Frenchmen,--one might see that at a glance;
probably they had reasons for greater precaution than those who entered
by the front door. One, a tall, powerfully-built man, with fair hair and
beard, dressed with a certain pretension to elegance,--faded threadbare
elegance,--exhibiting no appearance of linen, was a Pole. One, a slight
bald man, very dark and sallow, was an Italian. The third, who seemed
like an _ouvrier_ in his holiday clothes, was a Belgian.