I sprang from the bed, slipped on my trousers, took up a revolver and drew aside a corner of the curtain. At first, the shutters were closed and the room in darkness and I saw only an indistinct shadow. Then the window was opened softly. Somebody lifted the iron bar and pushed back the shutters, thus admitting the light.
I now saw a woman return to the middle of the room. She was draped from head to foot in a brown stuff cloak. Nevertheless I knew her at once. It was Bérangère.
I had a feeling not so much of amazement as of sudden and profound pity at the sight of her emaciated face, her poor face, once so bright and eager, now so sad and wan. I did not even think of rejoicing at the fact of her being alive, nor did I ask myself what clandestine business had brought her back to the Lodge. The one thing that held me captive was the painful spectacle of her pallid face, with its feverish, burning eyes and blue eyelids. Her cloak betrayed the shrunken figure beneath it.
Her heart must have been beating terribly, for she held her two hands to her breast to suppress its throbbing. She even had to lean on the edge of the table. She staggered and nearly fell. Poor Bérangère. I felt anguish-stricken as I watched her.
She pulled herself together, however, and looked around her. Then, with a tottering gait, she went to the mantelpiece, where two old engravings, framed in black with a gold beading, hung one on either side of the looking-glass. She climbed on a chair and took down the one on the right, a portrait of D'Alembert.
Stepping down from the chair, she examined the back of the frame, which was closed by a piece of old card-board the edges of which were fastened to the sides of the frame by strips of gummed cloth. Bérangère cut these strips with a pen-knife, bending back the tacks which held the cardboard in position. It came out of the frame; and I then saw—Bérangère had her back turned in my direction, so that not a detail escaped me—I then saw that there was inserted between the cardboard and the engraving a large sheet of paper covered with my uncle's writing.
At the top, in red ink, was a drawing of the three geometrical eyes.
Next came the following words, in bold black capitals:
"Instructions for working my discovery, abridged from the manuscript sent to my nephew."
And next forty or fifty very closely-written lines, in a hand too small to allow me to decipher them.