De Marsay was not impulsive. Any other young man would have obeyed his impulse to obtain at once some information about a girl who realized so fully the most luminous ideas ever expressed upon women in the poetry of the East; but, too experienced to compromise his good fortune, he had told his coachman to continue along the Rue Saint Lazare and carry him back to his house. The next day, his confidential valet, Laurent by name, as cunning a fellow as the Frontin of the old comedy, waited in the vicinity of the house inhabited by the unknown for the hour at which letters were distributed. In order to be able to spy at his ease and hang about the house, he had followed the example of those police officers who seek a good disguise, and bought up cast-off clothes of an Auvergnat, the appearance of whom he sought to imitate. When the postman, who went the round of the Rue Saint Lazare that morning, passed by, Laurent feigned to be a porter unable to remember the name of a person to whom he had to deliver a parcel, and consulted the postman. Deceived at first by appearances, this personage, so picturesque in the midst of Parisian civilization, informed him that the house in which the girl with the golden eyes dwelt belonged to Don Hijos, Marquis de San-Real, grandee of Spain. Naturally, it was not with the Marquis that the Auvergnat was concerned.
“My parcel,” he said, “is for the marquise.”
“She is away,” replied the postman. “Her letters are forwarded to London.”
“Then the marquise is not a young girl who...?”
“Ah!” said the postman, interrupting the valet de chambre and observing him attentively, “you are as much a porter as I’m...”
Laurent chinked some pieces of gold before the functionary, who began to smile.
“Come, here’s the name of your quarry,” he said, taking from his leather wallet a letter bearing a London stamp, upon which the address, “To Mademoiselle Paquita Valdes, Rue Saint Lazare, Hotel San-Real, Paris,” was written in long, fine characters, which spoke of a woman’s hand.
“Could you tap a bottle of Chablis, with a few dozen oysters, and a filet saute with mushrooms to follow it?” said Laurent, who wished to win the postman’s valuable friendship.
“At half-past nine, when my round is finished—— Where?”
“At the corner of the Rue de la Chaussee-d’Antin and the Rue Neuve-des-Mathurins, at the Puits sans Vin,” said Laurent.