Keeping close to the stone wall of the building, he made his way through the black arch of the Gevangenpoort on to the Plaats.
Here the closer-set street lights revealed the railings encircling the Vyver. Florent followed them a little way, then, gathering his cloak closely round him, paused and looked down on to the water, an abyss of fathomless darkness which, where the feeble rays of the lamp struck it, revealed billows of curling mist, which seemed to be sucked down into measureless depths of obscurity.
Florent leant against the railing, as completely shut away from the world as if in a secret chamber. All ordinary sights and sounds had receded, vanished; he could not even discern the lights in the Binnenhof or Maritshuis. His hair was wet his hat limp with damp; beads of moisture clung to his heavy frieze cloak, he could feel the water trickling under his collar, and there was a salt taste on his lips. He stood quite still watching the twisting, striving thickness of vapour disclosed by the beams of the lamp. Then suddenly a light was flashed over him, and a voice, conveying a slightly foreign accent, spoke in a low tone close beside him—
“Are you Mynheer Van Mander, clerk to M. de Witt?”
Florent lifted eyes startled from absorbed contemplation. He saw, through the curtain of the filmy mist, the figure of a man, wearing, like himself, a heavy mantle, and carrying a lantern.
“I am sure that you are,” the speaker continued. “I have been following you a considerable time.”
“For what purpose?” asked Florent.
The stranger, who had loomed up so quietly out of the fog, came a little nearer.
“You were at the Palace yesterday?”