Suddenly from sabre hilts and pistol butts resounded vigorously on the badly-joined plank of the door, and a powerful voice shouted angrily,—
"Open, in the devil's name, or I'll smash in your miserable door!"
[CHAPTER IV.]
COUNT MAXIME GAËTAN DE LHORAILLES.
Before explaining to the reader the cause of the infernal noise which suddenly rose to disturb the tranquility of the people assembled in the pulquería, we are obliged to go back a little distance.
About three years before the period in which our story opens, on a cold and rainy December night, eight men, whose costumes and manners showed them to belong to the highest Parisian society, were assembled in an elegant private room of the Café Anglais.
The night was far advanced; the wax candles, two-thirds consumed, only spread a mournful light; the rain lashed the windows, and the wind howled lugubriously. The guests, seated round the table and the relics of a splendid supper, seemed, in spite of themselves, to have been infected by the gloomy melancholy that brooded over nature, and, lying back on their chairs, some slept, while others, lost in thought, paid no attention to what was going on around them.
The clock on the mantelpiece slowly struck three, and the last sound had scarcely died away ere the repeated cracking of a postilion's whip could be heard beneath the windows of the room.
The door opened and a waiter came in.