It was Napoleon, who had been dining privately with the Prussian Ambassador. He was in evening dress, covered by a dark overcoat; his hat-brim was over his eyes, and he held a cigarette between his lips. When Napoleon wore his hat in this fashion, with the brim covering his eyes like a penthouse, the whole figure of the man became sinister and full of fate.
I would sooner a flock of black birds had crossed my path than that mysterious figure in the broad-brimmed, tall hat, beneath which in the darkness the profile showed vaguely, yet distinctly, like the profile on some time-battered coin of Imperial Rome, some coin on which the Imperial face alone remains asking the dweller in a new age: Who is this?
I watched him getting into his carriage and the carriage driving away, surrounded by the glittering sabres of the Cent Gardes; then I returned home.
This, it will be remembered, was the night of the 1st of October.
* * * * *
On the 4th of October, three days after, I was sitting at my club, reading a newspaper, when the Comte de Brissac proposed a game of écarté.
I take cards seriously; the gain or loss of money is nothing to me beside the gain or loss of the game. That is why, perhaps, I am often successful.
There were several other players in the room, and a good many loungers looking on at the games, several around our table, of whom I did not take the slightest notice, so immersed was I in the play.
I lost. Never had I such bad luck. The cards declared themselves against me; some evil influence was at work. At the end of half an hour, during a pause in the game, and after having lost a good sum of money to De Brissac, I looked up, and for the first time noticed the people around us. Right opposite to me, standing behind De Brissac, and looking me full in the face, was Baron Carl von Lichtenberg.