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aloud. The consciousness that there is no listener induces speech.
He walked with slow steps, his head bent down, his hands behind him, the
left hand in the right, the fingers open.
Suddenly he felt something slipped between his fingers.
He turned round quickly.
In his hand was a paper, and in front of him a man.
It was the man who, coming behind him with the stealth of a cat, had
placed the paper in his fingers.
The paper was a letter.
The man, as he appeared pretty clearly in the starlight, was small,
chubby-cheeked, young, sedate, and dressed in a scarlet livery, exposed
from top to toe through the opening of a long gray cloak, then called a
capenoche, a Spanish word contracted; in French it was cape-de-nuit.
His head was covered by a crimson cap, like the skull-cap of a cardinal,
on which servitude was indicated by a strip of lace. On this cap was a
plume of tisserin feathers. He stood motionless before Gwynplaine, like
a dark outline in a dream.
Gwynplaine recognized the duchess's page.
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