Offended pride would be seen tearing its hair and despised love cursing a thousand curses. Captain d'Haumont would have been seen putting his lips to the photograph of the beloved image, discarding it almost immediately, and finally burning it in the flame of a candle.
He watched to the end with a feeling of pain the candle in which the beloved portrait was consumed. It seemed actually to suffer the torture which he inflicted on it, and in the gleam of the dying flame, in the last ashes, the face of Mlle. de la Boulays seemed set with a look at her inquisitor of unforgettable distress and reproach.
Strange to say—and it bore witness once more to the connection which subsists between matter and spirit even when kept asunder by thick walls, a connection to which the middle ages saw no limits, for they practised "casting a spell" on their enemies—while Mlle. de la Boulays suffered thus in her portrait she was suffering equally in her mind. And it was at the very moment when, in her drawing-room, she was acknowledging the congratulations of her friends on the news which it suited Count de Gorbio to spread abroad, that she sank in a huddled heap in a chair as if suddenly deprived of life. . . .
Captain d'Haumont was in his room strapping his luggage when a knock came at the door. It was M. de la Boulays' valet, a man called Schwab, who claimed to be of Alsatian descent and whom he had never liked though he could not say why, for he never had any occasion to complain of him. But when, as in the case of Didier d'Haumont, a man has a past full of irregularities, and has been forced to keep company with all sorts of people, his perceptions become particularly acute to detect the moral weight of the more or less mysterious elements which surround him, so that Captain d'Haumont was assailed by a vague foreboding with regard to Schwab.
The man came up to tell him that M. de la Boulays would be glad to see him in his study before his departure.
D'Haumont went with the servant, who showed him into a room which was occupied by M. de la Boulays and the important person who had just arrived. This gentleman had been appointed to conduct a secret investigation into some startling incidents in enemy propaganda.
Captain d'Haumont was introduced to Monsieur G—— by M. de la Boulays.
"Monsieur G———- wants a reliable man for a special mission," he said. "He came here from Paris in his car with a small staff, none of whom he can spare. It's a matter of taking a letter to Paris to-night, and you will be put on your honor for its safety. Monsieur G—— is anxious that the commission should be carried out with great tact. Since you are taking the train to Paris this evening I consider that Monsieur G—— cannot have a better 'messenger' than you."
"I am obliged to you, M. de la Boulays, for giving me the opportunity of making myself useful," returned the Captain. "Where am I to deliver the letter?"
"To the Hotel d'Or . . . at the corner of the Rue Saint Honoré and the Rue Saint Roch."