Page:Gaston Leroux--The man with the black feather.djvu/134

112 down a magnificent aisle of it, which brought us to the lodges built in front of the Château by the desire of Queen Anne of Austria.

"As we reached the left corner of the wall, I thought I once more recognised, slinking into a thicket, the abominable silhouette and repulsive face of Signor Petito. Adolphe maintained that I was mistaken.

"Was it because I was treading this old soil which I knew, because I found myself in that friendly forest among those familiar trees, or was it the result of a long, suggestive conversation about old times and the people of long ago? Of a sudden memory sprang to birth in me, a very pleasant memory, as sometimes a moving remembrance of one's youthful days comes back to one, days which one believed for ever lost, buried in the memory. And then I saw quite clearly that I was the same soul, for I recalled Cartouche as if we had not been separated by two hundred years of death.

"Yes, I had the same soul, a long same soul indeed: at one end was Cartouche, at the other Theophrastus.

"I remembered the old days; and above all I remembered them when we had passed the northern wall, plunging always deeper into the forest. I threw myself down on the turf at