Think of me
then, Jacquet."
"I shall be at your house to-morrow at eight o'clock. We will go
together; I'll wait for you, if you like, in the street. You may run
some danger, and you ought to have near you some devoted person who'll
understand a mere sign, and whom you can safely trust. Count on me."
"Even to help me in killing some one?"
"The deuce! the deuce!" said Jacquet, repeating, as it were, the same
musical note. "I have two children and a wife."
Jules pressed his friend's hand and went away; but returned
immediately.
"I forgot the letter," he said. "But that's not all, I must reseal
it."
"The deuce! the deuce! you opened it without saving the seal; however,
it is still possible to restore it. Leave it with me and I'll bring it
to you _secundum scripturam_."
"At what time?"
"Half-past five."
"If I am not yet in, give it to the porter and tell him to send it up
to madame."
"Do you want me to-morrow?"
"No. Adieu."
Jules drove at once to the place de la Rotonde du Temple, where he
left his cabriolet and went on foot to the rue des Enfants-Rouges. He
found the house of Madame Etienne Gruget and examined it. There, the
mystery on which depended the fate of so many persons would be cleared
up; there, at this moment, was Ferragus, and to Ferragus all the
threads of this strange plot led. The Gordian knot of the drama,
already so bloody, was surely in a meeting between Madame Jules, her
husband, and that man; and a blade able to cut the closest of such
knots would not be wanting.
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