"Take my word for it, I know better. Things like this aren't hoaxes. Besides, I know the—the lady. She has often been pointed out to me: and at the trial—— By Jove, Charlot, she is the most enchanting woman in the world: strangely lovely, infinitely distinguished, absolutely fascinating!"
"You are raving like a schoolboy."
"So much the better for me! Why, I was half dead with fatigue, and now I am myself again. Be quick, booby! My hat! Time is getting on. Where is it?"
"Where is what?" the bewildered Charlot asked.
"Why, this place," Valgrand answered irritably: "this rue Messier. Look it up in the directory."
Valgrand stamped impatiently up and down the room while Charlot hurriedly turned over the pages of the directory, muttering the syllables at the top of each as he ran through them in alphabetical order.
"J ... K ... L ... M ... Ma ... Me ...—Why, M. Valgrand——"
"What's the matter?"
"Why, it is the street where the prison is!"
"The Santé? Where Gurn is—in the condemned cell?" Valgrand cocked his hat rakishly on one side. "And I have an assignation at the prison?"