Page:Memoirs of Vidocq, Volume 3.djvu/131

 "There is no one there but Caffin."

"Did I not tell you so?"

"Where is the brute, where is the monster?"

"If you like," I said to her, "I will take you to him."

"Oh pray do, I beg of you, Jules."

"It is a long distance from here, at the Hotel d'Angleterre."

"Do you think he is there?"

"I am sure of it; he went to pass an hour or two and wait until Félicité has finished her evening, and then he will go and meet her in the Rue Froid Manteau."

Emilie did not doubt but that I had exactly guessed the fact and would not delay a moment; she was bursting with rage, but would give me neither peace nor quiet until I had consented to undertake to go with her to the Hotel d'Angleterre. The transit appeared long, for I was the knight of a lady, whose centre of gravity, vacillating excessively, gave me much trouble to keep my own equilibrium; however, half dragging, half carrying the belle, I reached the Rue St. Honoré, and the very door of the haunt where she trusted to find her man. We went through the rooms, and without fear of disturbing the amorous tête-à-têtestête-à-tête [sic], glanced our eyes over each closet which was ranged on both sides of the corridor. Hotot was not there, and the rival of Félicité was transported beyond bounds, her eyes were starting from their orbits, her lips covered with foam; she wept, she stormed, she was an epileptic, a demoniac; with dishevelled hair, pale, her features frightfully and spasmodically contracted, and the sinews of her neck stretched by passion, she presented the hideous appearance of one of those corpses to whom galvanism gas restored motion. Terrible effects of love and brandy, jealousy and wine! Yet in the crisis which thus agitated her, Emilie did not lose sight of me, but clinging to my arm, swo eswore [sic] never to quit me until she had unkennelled the ingrate who had thus tormented her.