The Hotel du Cantal was one of the dirtiest lodging houses that I had ever seen and I had seen some pretty dirty ones! But what the old woman said was worth considering, besides we could not be particular. I had not found my family in their beautiful Paris mansion yet. Mattia had been right to want to get all the money we could on our way to the city. What should we have done if we had not our seventeen francs in our pockets?
"How much will you charge for a room for my friend and myself?" I asked.
"Ten cents a day. That's not much."
"Well, we'll come back to-night."
"Come back early; Paris is a bad place at night for boys," she called after me.
Night was falling. The street lamps were lit. I had a long way to walk to the Cathedral, where I was to meet Mattia. All my high spirits had vanished. I was very tired and all around me seemed gloomy. In this great Paris full of light and noise I felt so utterly alone. Would I ever find my own people? Was I ever to see my real mother and my real father? When I reached the Cathedral I had still twenty minutes to wait for Mattia. I felt this night that I needed his friendship more than ever. What a comfort it was to think that I was going to see him so gay, so kind, such a friend!
A little before seven I heard a quirk hark, then out of the shadows jumped Capi! He sprang onto my knees and licked me with his soft wet tongue. I hugged him in my arms and kissed his cold nose. It was not long before Mattia appeared. In a few words I told him that Barberin was dead and that there was now little hope that I could ever find my family. Then he gave me all the sympathy of which I was in need. He tried to console me and told me not to despair. He wished as sincerely as I that we could find my parents.
We returned to the Hotel du Cantal. The next morning I wrote to Mother Barberin to express my grief for her loss and to ask her if she had had any news from her husband before he died. By return mail she sent me word that her husband had written to her from the hospital, where they had taken him, and said that if he did not get better she was to write to Greth and Galley's, Lincoln Square, London, for they were the lawyers who were looking for me. He told her that she was not to take any steps until she was sure that he was dead.
"We must go to London," said Mattia, when I had finished reading the letter that the priest had written for her. "If the lawyers are English, that shows that your parents are English."