I had just finished breakfast with my old friend Georges Garin when the servant handed him a letter covered with seals and foreign stamps.
Georges said:
"Will you excuse me?"
"Certainly."
And so he began to read the letter, which was written in a large English handwriting, crossed and re-crossed in every direction. He read slowly, with serious attention and the interest which we only pay to things that touch our hearts.
Then he put the letter on the mantel-piece and said:
"That was a curious story! I've never told you about it, I think. Yet it was a sentimental adventure, and it really happened to me. That was a strange New Year's Day indeed! It must have been twenty years ago, since I was then thirty, and am now fifty years old.
"I was then an inspector in the Maritime Insurance Company, of which I am now director. I had arranged to pass the fête of New Year's in Paris—since it is a convention to make that day a fête—when I received a letter from the manager, asking me to proceed at once to the island of Ré, where a three-masted vessel from Saint-Nazaire, insured by us, had just been driven ashore. It was then eight o'clock in the morning. I arrived at the office at ten, to get my advices, and that evening I took the express, which put me down in La Rochelle the next day, the thirty-first of December.
"I had two hours to wait before going aboard the boat for Ré. So I made a tour in the town. It is certainly a fantastic city, La Rochelle, with a strong character of its own—streets tangled like a labyrinth, sidewalks running under endless arcaded galleries like those of the Rue de Rivoli, but low, mysterious, built as if to form a fit scene for conspirators, and making an ancient and striking background for those old-time wars, the savage heroic wars of religion. It is indeed the typical old Huguenot city, conservative, discreet, with no fine art to show, with no wonderful monuments, such as make Rouen; but it is remarkable for its severe, somewhat cunning look; it is a city of obstinate fighters, a city where fanaticisms might well blossom, where the faith of the Calvinists became exalted, and which gave birth to the plot of the 'Four Sergeants.'
"After I had wandered for some time about these curious streets, I went aboard the black, rotund little steamboat which was to take me to the island of Ré. It was called the Jean Guiton. It started with angry puffings, passed between the two old towers which guard the harbour, crossed the roadstead, and issued from the mole built by Richelieu, the great stones of which can be seen at the water's edge, enclosing the town like a great necklace. Then the steamboat turned to the right.