Moreover, was it my province to discuss the manner of employing money which did not belong to me?
Therefore I arrived at Allées de Tourny. Madame Caudéré was alone in the shop. I followed my instructions, and was offered a second-hand piano for six hundred francs. It was fifty francs below the stated price. I hesitated taking it, but, remembering his own words, ‘I will be there,’ I concluded the bargain on the express condition that the instrument might be delivered the same evening, according to our benefactor’s will.
I arrived home quickly, impatient to have an explanation concerning the fifty francs.
It was the first time I had observed an irregularity, and as my submission was only the result of an infallibility which, until then, had never been belied, the absolute and regular continuation of these facts was required in order to keep up that blind confidence which already impaired so seriously my free will.
It was with almost a triumphant air I announced that the piano had only cost six hundred francs.
‘I know it,’ said the unknown; ‘but Madame made a mistake.’
On the morrow, when settling the account, the shopkeeper said to me: ‘You got a bargain yesterday; my wife made a mistake in selling you for six hundred francs a piano I had fixed at six hundred and fifty.’
Absorbed in these supernatural incidents, I did not think of replying. I walked slowly home wrapped in thought. I related to the mysterious being what had happened to me at the piano-shop.
If my mystical preoccupations had made me forget my duty for an instant, he was not long in recalling it to me.
‘I apprised you of it,’ he answered. I understood, and brought back the fifty francs to the tradesman, not caring to benefit by a mistake.