THE CAPE OF STORMS In the opening month of each of the four seasons there are some terrible epochs, usually about the 1st and the 15th.

Rodolphe, who could not witness the approach of one or the other of these two dates without alarm, nicknamed them the Cape of Storms.

On these mornings it is not Aurora who opens the portals of the East, but creditors, landlords, bailiffs and their kidney.

The day begins with a shower of bills and accounts and winds up with a hailstorm of protests.

_Dies irae_.
Now one morning, it was the 15th of April, Rodolphe was peacefully slumbering--and dreaming that one of his uncles had just bequeathed him a whole province in Peru, the feminine inhabitants included.
Whilst he was wallowing in this imaginary Pacolus, the sound of a key turning in the lock interrupted the heir presumptive just at the most dazzling point of his golden dream.
Rodolphe sat up in bed, his eyes and mind yet heavy with slumber, and looked about him.
He vaguely perceived standing in the middle of his room a man who had just entered.
This early visitor bore a bag slung at his back and a large pocketbook in his hand.