Naarboveck made the introductions:
"Monsieur Jérôme Fandor—Mademoiselle de Naarboveck, my daughter—Monsieur de Loubersac, lieutenant of cuirassiers."
Silence reigned after these formal introductions. If Fandor was in certain measure satisfied with the turn the conversation had taken, he was really bored by this involuntary intrusion into a family gathering which mattered little to him. He felt he had been caught. How the devil was he going to escape from this wasp's nest? His eye fell on a timepiece. Seeing the hour, he thought:
"Had it not been for this Brocq fellow, and that fool of a Dupont, I should now be in the train asleep, and rolling along towards Dijon!"...
Mademoiselle de Naarboveck, with the ease of a well-bred woman, offered the journalist a cup of boiling hot coffee.
Mademoiselle Berthe suggested sugar.
Monsieur de Naarboveck, as if he had suddenly remembered something, said to him:
"But you bear a name which recalls many things, Monsieur Jérôme Fandor! It was you, of course, famous journalist that you are, who, some time ago, was in constant pursuit of a mysterious ruffian whom they called Fantômas?"
Fandor, a little embarrassed, smiled. It seemed to him something quite abnormal to hear Fantômas mentioned in this gathering, so simple, so natural, so commonplace.
Surely, this criminal, his adventures, the police, and even reporting, must partake of the fantastic, the imaginary—it must all be Greek to such conventional people.