So communications were established with the outside. Once more, Lupin's efforts were crowned with success. All that he had to do now was to execute his plan and lead the press campaign which he had prepared in the peaceful solitude of his prison.
Three days later, these few lines appeared in the Grand Journal:
"Quite apart from Prince Bismarck's Memoirs, which, according to well-informed people, contain merely the official history of the events in which the great chancellor was concerned, there exists a series of confidential letters of no little interest.
"These letters have been recently discovered. We hear, on good authority, that they will be published almost immediately."
My readers will remember the noise which these mysterious sentences made throughout the civilized world, the comments in which people indulged, the suggestions put forward and, in particular, the controversy that followed in the German press. Who had inspired those lines? What were the letters in question? Who had written them to the chancellor or who had received them from him? Was it an act of posthumous revenge? Or was it an indiscretion committed by one of Bismarck's correspondents?
A second note settled public opinion as to certain points, but, at the same time, worked it up to a strange pitch of excitement. It ran as follows:
"To the Editor of the Grand Journal,
"Santé Palace,
"Cell 14, Second Division.
"Sir,