He threw himself on a butaca; and, resting his elbows on a table, he buried his head in his hands, and fell into deep thought. In this position, his eyes were involuntarily fixed on the note Don Cornelio had given him, and which was just in front of him. A sickly smile played on his lips.
"Poor fools!" he muttered, "who only dream of love and pleasure, to whom life is only one long festival. What need have I of your false protestations, to which I cannot respond? Love for me no longer exists. Like all the women who have preceded her, this one, doubtlessly, offers me an eternal love, which she will forget tomorrow. Why trouble myself about such absurdities? My heart is dead to joy—only too dead, alas!"
And he thrust the paper away.
The night was rapidly falling, and the count kindled a lucifer match to light a candle; but, as frequently happens to people deeply engaged, when he held the lucifer to the candle, he perceived that the former was nearly burnt out. Then, mechanically, he took up the note he had spurned, folded it up, and was going to twist it into a spill; but all at once he stopped, threw the match on the floor, lit another, and read this note, so despised a moment previously. The following were the contents:—
"A person interested in the Count Don Louis begs him, for his own sake, to go this evening to the Alameda at ten o'clock, under the first walk on the left. A person seated on the third bench will say to him 'Guaymas,' he will answer 'Atravida,' and follow her at a distance, without addressing other questions to her, to the spot where she is directed to lead him, and where the count will learn matters which, for his own safety and that of his comrades, it is important for him to know."
This strange note was not signed.
"What is the meaning of this?" the count said to himself. "Is it a mystification? For what object? Is it a snare offered me, in which they wish me to fall? By Heaven, I will know the truth! What hour is it—nine? I have still an hour before me. If my mysterious correspondent meditates an assassination, he will find with whom he has to deal. Who knows? Perhaps it is really a warning a good friend wishes to give me? I shall soon see."
While saying this, the count had changed his clothes for others of a dark hue. He put on his waist belt, through an iron ring of which, according to the Mexican fashion, he passed a sheathless machete; he placed two excellent revolvers in his girdle, wrapped himself carefully in the folds of a wide cloak, pulled his broad brimmed hat over his eyes, and prepared to go out.
"By Jove!" he said, as he crossed the threshold of the house, "armed as I am, the brigands who attempt to attack me will have their work cut out."
At the moment the count entered the street, it struck a quarter to ten by the clock of the Cabildo.