“His Excellency is mistaken.”
“Ah! I beg your pardon, M. Champcey; I have myself seen your letter.”
But already a sudden inspiration had, like a flash of lightning, cleared
up the mystery in Daniel’s mind.
“Ah! I wish I could see it too! Captain, I beseech you show me that
letter!”
The old officer began almost to think that Champcey was really not in
his right mind. He answered,--
“I do not have it; but it is among your papers in the bureau for
Personal Affairs.”
In a minute Daniel was in the office where those papers were kept, and
obtained, not without much trouble, and under certain conditions only,
leave to look at his papers. He opened the parcel with feverish haste;
and the very first paper that fell in his hands was a letter, dated the
day before, in which he urgently requested the minister to grant him the
special favor of being sent out with the expedition to Cochin China on
board the frigate “Conquest.”
Daniel was, of course, perfectly sure that he had written no such
letter.
But the handwriting was so precisely like his own, letter for letter,
and even his signature was so admirably imitated, that he felt for a
moment utterly bewildered, mistrusting, for a second, his own eyes, his
own reason. The whole was done so exceedingly well, that if the matter
had been one of ordinary importance, and the date of the letter had gone
back to a fortnight or so ago, he would certainly have suspected his
memory rather than the letter before him.