We heard Don Luiz's step, and we continued our examination of the library.
After seeing the château we returned to Paris. As Marguerite felt tired, she asked me to come and spend a quiet evening with her. I promised to do so.
When I arrived there I found her pale and sad; she was evidently quite overcome.
"What is the matter?" said I to her.
"You will laugh at me,"—she had tears in her eyes,—"but I have lost a bracelet that belonged to my mother; I had it on this morning. You know how I prize it, and will understand how grieved I am. I have sought for it everywhere. It is nowhere—nowhere!"
As she told me this, I remembered confusedly having seen, when Marguerite took off her glove, something that shone brilliantly, and which fell to the floor just as I was kissing her hand in the library, but, being so enchanted by the kiss, I paid no attention to anything else.
"I am so foolishly superstitious about the possession of that bracelet," said Marguerite, "that I will be dreadfully unhappy if it is really lost, but what hope can I have? Have I any? Ah, pardon, my friend, for my showing such sorrow for anything which does not concern you, but if you only knew how much that bracelet meant to me— Ah, what a sad night I shall spend, how unhappy I shall be!"
There flashed through my mind one of those ideas that come to us when we are desperately in love. I had a very fast race-horse,—it was Candid; it was three leagues and a half from Paris to the Château of ——; the night was fine, the moon shone clear, the road was a splendid one. I wished to spare Marguerite not only a night, but an hour, even a few moments of grief, by finding out in the least time possible if the bracelet had been left in the library of ——, even at the risk of killing my horse.
"Pardon for my selfishness," said I to Marguerite, "but your distress and the loss you have sustained have reminded me that I foolishly left the key in the lock of a little chest which contains important papers. I have every confidence in my valet de chambre, but others besides he might enter my room. Permit me, then, to write a note, that I will send back by the carriage, to tell him to get the key, and bring it to me."
I wrote the following words: