I was at the Hôtel de Luynes--or Granger--early on the following
morning. The mists were still hanging about the dismal upper windows of
the inscrutable Faubourg; the toilet of the city was being completed;
the little hoses on wheels were clattering about the quiet larger
streets. I had not much courage thus early in the day. I had started
impulsively; stepping with the impulse of immediate action from the
doorstep of the dairy where I had breakfasted. But I made detours; it
was too early, and my pace slackened into a saunter as I passed the row
of porters' lodges in that dead, inscrutable street. I wanted to fly;
had that impulse very strongly; but I burnt my boats with my inquiry of
the incredibly ancient, one-eyed porteress. I made my way across the
damp court-yard, under the enormous portico, and into the chilly stone
hall that no amount of human coming and going sufficed to bring back to
a semblance of life. Mademoiselle was expecting me. One went up a great
flight of stone steps into one of the immensely high, narrow, impossibly
rectangular ante-rooms that one sees in the frontispieces of old plays.
The furniture looked no more than knee-high until one discovered that
one's self had no appreciable stature. The sad light slanted in ruled
lines from the great height of the windows; an army of motes moved
slowly in and out of the shadows. I went after awhile and looked
disconsolately out into the court-yard. The porteress was making her way
across the gravelled space, her arms, her hands, the pockets of her
black apron full of letters of all sizes. I remembered that the
_facteur_ had followed me down the street. A noise of voices came
confusedly to my ears from between half-opened folding-doors; the thing
reminded me of my waiting in de Mersch's rooms. It did not last so long.
The voices gathered tone, as they do at the end of a colloquy, succeeded
each other at longer intervals, and at last came to a sustained halt.
The tall doors moved ajar and she entered, followed by a man whom I
recognized as the governor of a province of the day before. In that
hostile light he looked old and weazened and worried; seemed to have
lost much of his rotundity. As for her, she shone with a light of her
own.
He greeted me dejectedly, and did not brighten when she let him know
that we had a mutual friend in Callan. The Governor, it seemed, in his
capacity of Supervisor of the Système, was to conduct that distinguished
person through the wilds of Greenland; was to smooth his way and to
point out to him excellences of administration.