First of all, as a matter of course, I betook myself to the coffee-house
where I had met the baron; but in the coffee-house no one knew him or
had even noticed him; he was a chance visitor. The proprietors had
noticed the negro--his figure had been too striking to escape notice;
but who he was, where he stayed, no one knew either. Leaving my address,
in case of an emergency, at the coffee-house, I began to walk about the
streets and the water-front of the town, the wharves, the boulevards; I
looked into all the public institutions, and nowhere did I find any one
who resembled either the baron or his companion.... As I had not caught
the baron's name, I was deprived of the possibility of appealing to the
police; but I privately gave two or three guardians of public order to
understand (they gazed at me in surprise, it is true, and did not
entirely believe me) that I would lavishly reward their zeal if they
should be successful in coming upon the traces of those two individuals,
whose personal appearance I tried to describe as minutely as possible.
Having strolled about in this manner until dinner-time, I returned home
thoroughly worn out. My mother had got out of bed; but with her habitual
melancholy there was mingled a new element, a sort of pensive
perplexity, which cut me to the heart like a knife. I sat with her all
the evening. We said hardly anything; she laid out her game of patience,
I silently looked at her cards. She did not refer by a single word to
her story, or to what had happened the day before. It was as though we
had both entered into a compact not to touch upon those strange and
terrifying occurrences.... She appeared to be vexed with herself and
ashamed of what had involuntarily burst from her; but perhaps she did
not remember very clearly what she had said in her semi-fevered
delirium, and hoped that I would spare her.... And, in fact, I did spare
her, and she was conscious of it; as on the preceding day she avoided
meeting my eyes.
A frightful storm had suddenly sprung up out of doors. The wind howled
and tore in wild gusts, the window-panes rattled and quivered;
despairing shrieks and groans were borne through the air, as though
something on high had broken loose and were flying with mad weeping
over the shaking houses. Just before dawn I lost myself in a doze ...
when suddenly it seemed to me as though some one had entered my room and
called me, had uttered my name, not in a loud, but in a decided voice. I
raised my head and saw no one; but, strange to relate! I not only was
not frightened--I was delighted; there suddenly arose within me the
conviction that now I should, without fail, attain my end. I hastily
dressed myself and left the house.