"It is good to be alive, Asticot," said my master. "It is good to be in Paris. It is good to get up early. It is good to see the world's work beginning. It is also good to feel infernally hungry and to have the means of satisfying one's desires. But as, in the absence of Blanquette, my establishment is disorganised, I think we had better have our breakfast at a crêmerie than in the Rue des Saladiers. We can talk over our coffee."
I accompanied him across the street in a muddled condition of intellect, casting sidelong glances at him from time to time, as if to assure myself that he was real. Having just come from an English environment where the niceties of costume were as rigidly observed as the niceties of religion, I could not help marvelling at Paragot's attire. He looked like a tenth-rate French provincial actor made up to represent a duke, and in a country where none but actors and footmen are clean-shaven this likeness was the more accentuated. Also the difference between Paragot hairy and bearded and Paragot in his present callow state was that between an old unbroken hazel nut and its bald, shrivelled kernel.
We entered the crêmerie, sat down and ordered our coffee and crisp horse-shoe loaves. I think the petit déjeuner at a crêmerie is one of the most daintily served meals in France. The morning dew glistens so freshly on the butter, the fringed napkin is so spotless, the wide-mouthed cups offer themselves so delicately generous. If everyone breakfasted there crime would cease. No man could hatch a day's iniquity amid such influences.
When we were half-way through, Paragot unbuttoned his frock coat and took from his pocket a black-edged letter which he flourished before my eyes. It was then that I noticed, to my great surprise, that he had cut his finger-nails. I thought of Madame Boin.
"It is from the Comtesse de Verneuil, and it gives you the word of the enigma."
"Yes, Master," said I, eyeing the letter.
"Confess, my little Asticot," he laughed, "that you are dying of curiosity."
"You would tell me," said I, "that it was no death for a gentleman."
"You have a way of repeating my unsaid epigrams which delights me," said he, throwing the letter on the table. "Read it."
I read as follows: