“Pardieu!” said he, “if I were to knock at each of these doors question all the lodgers, spend a thousand crowns to make valets and old women speak, I might learn what I want to know. There are fifty houses; it would take me at least five nights.”
As he spoke, he perceived a small and trembling light approaching.
This light advanced slowly, and irregularly, stopping occasionally, moving on again, and going first to the right, then to the left, then, for a minute, coming straight on, and again diverging. Bussy leaned against a door, and waited. The light continued to advance, and soon he could see a black figure, which, as it advanced, took the form of a man, holding a lantern in his left hand. He appeared to Bussy to belong to the honorable fraternity of drunkards, for nothing else seemed to explain the eccentric movements of the lantern. At last he slipped over a piece of ice, and fell. Bussy was about to come forward and offer his assistance, but the man and the lantern were quickly up again, and advanced directly towards him, when he saw, to his great surprise, that the man had a bandage over his eyes. “Well!” thought he, “it is a strange thing to play at blind man’s buff with a lantern in your hand. Am I beginning to dream again? And, good heavens! he is talking to himself. If he be not drunk or mad, he is a mathematician.”
This last surmise was suggested by the words that Bussy heard.
“488, 489, 490,” murmured the man, “it must be near here.” And then he raised his bandage, and finding himself in front of a house, examined it attentively.
“No, it is not this,” he said. Then, putting back his bandage, he recommenced his walk and his calculations. “491, 492, 493, 494; I must be close.” And he raised his bandage again, and, approaching the door next to that against which Bussy was standing, began again to examine.
“Hum!” said he, “it might, but all these doors are so alike.”
“The same reflection I have just made,” thought Bussy.
However, the mathematician now advanced to the next door, and going up to it, found himself face to face with Bussy.
“Oh!” cried he, stepping back.