"To forget what? Come, tell me what has happened."
"Not now," said Franzius. "I cannot tell you now. To-morrow I will call on you at your house in the Place Vendôme. Then I will tell you."
That was all I could get from him; and off he went, having first wrung both my hands, the tears running down his face so that the passers-by turned to look and wonder at him.
"Come early to-morrow," I called out after him as he went. Then I pursued my way home to the Place Vendôme, wondering at the meaning of what I had seen and troubled at heart.
CHAPTER XXVIII THE OLD COAT
Next morning I sent Joubert to my guardian's apartments with a message craving an interview.
It was nine o'clock, and the old gentleman received me in his dressing-room and in his dressing-gown. Beril had just shaved him, and he was examining his rubicund, jovial face in a hand-mirror. The place smelt of Parma violets and shaving-soap. It was like the dressing-room of a duchess, so elaborate were the fittings and so complex the manicure instruments and toilet arrangements set out on the dressing-table.
"Leave me, Beril," said the old gentleman, when he had made a little bow to my reflection in the big mirror facing him. Then, taking up a tooth instrument—for, like M. Chateaubriand, he kept on his toilet-table a set of dental instruments with which he doctored his own pearly teeth—he motioned me to take a seat and proceed.