"Hark ye, my friend," said the postman, when he rejoined the valet an
hour after this encounter, "if your master is in love with the girl,
he is in for a famous task. I doubt you'll not succeed in seeing her.
In the ten years that I've been postman in Paris, I have seen plenty
of different kinds of doors! But I can tell you, and no fear of being
called a liar by any of my comrades, there never was a door so
mysterious as M. de San-Real's. No one can get into the house without
the Lord knows what counter-word; and, notice, it has been selected on
purpose between a courtyard and a garden to avoid any communication
with other houses. The porter is an old Spaniard, who never speaks a
word of French, but peers at people as Vidocq might, to see if they
are not thieves. If a lover, a thief, or you--I make no comparisons
--could get the better of this first wicket, well, in the first hall,
which is shut by a glazed door, you would run across a butler
surrounded by lackeys, an old joker more savage and surly even than
the porter. If any one gets past the porter's lodge, my butler comes
out, waits for you at the entrance, and puts you through a
cross-examination like a criminal. That has happened to me, a mere
postman. He took me for an eavesdropper in disguise, he said, laughing
at his nonsense. As for the servants, don't hope to get aught out of
them; I think they are mutes, no one in the neighborhood knows the
color of their speech; I don't know what wages they can pay them to
keep them from talk and drink; the fact is, they are not to be got at,
whether because they are afraid of being shot, or that they have some
enormous sum to lose in the case of an indiscretion.
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