Choulette, without wishing to appear to be careful of his papers, was very orderly about them.

He assured himself that he had not lost the pieces of paper on which he noted at the coffeehouse his ideas for poems, nor the dozen of flattering letters which, soiled and spotted, he carried with him continually, to read them to his newly-made companions at night.

After assuring himself that nothing was missing, he took from the book a letter folded in an open envelope.

He waved it for a while, with an air of mysterious impudence, then handed it to the Countess Martin.

It was a letter of introduction from the Marquise de Rieu to a princess of the House of France, a near relative of the Comte de Chambord, who, old and a widow, lived in retirement near the gates of Florence.