“Here it is: 

“DEAR FRIEND: 

“Many thanks for your letter.  Here is the book.  I have to thank you also that you did not lay my behavior of your last days in Paris up against me.  It must have seemed strange to you.  I will try to explain it.

“I have been nervous from childhood.  The fact that most of my books have treated of fantastic subjects,—­somewhat in the manner of Edgar Allan Poe—­has made me more susceptible for all that world which lies beyond and about the world of every-day life.  I have sought after,—­and yet feared—­the mystical; cool and lucid as I can be at times, I have always had an inclination for the enigmatical, the Unknown.

“But the first thing that ever happened in my life that I could not explain or understand was the affair of the manuscript.  You remember the day I stood in your room?  I must have looked the picture of misery.  The affair had played more havoc with my nerves than you can very well understand.  Your mockery hurt me, and yet under all I felt ashamed of my own thoughts concerning this foolish occurrence.  I could not explain the phenomenon, and I shivered at the things that it suggested to me.  In this condition, which lasted several weeks, I could not bear to see you or anyone else, and I was impolite enough even to leave your letter unanswered.

“The book appeared and made a hit, since that sort of thing was the center of interest just then.  But almost a month passed before I could arouse myself from that condition of fear and—­I had almost said, softening of the brain—­which prevented my enjoyment of my success.

“Then the explanation came.  Thanks to this occurrence I know now that I shall never again be in danger of being ‘haunted.’

“And I know now that Chance can bring about stranger happenings than can any fancied visitations from the spirit world.  Here you have the story of this ‘mystic’ occurrence, which came near endangering my sanity, and which turns out to be a chance combination of a gust of wind, a sudden downpour of rain, and the strange elements in the character of our little friend Adolphe the printer’s boy.

“You remember that funny little chap with the crafty eye, his talent for gambling, and his admiration for the girl of ‘La Prunelle’?  A queer little mixture this child who has himself alone to look to for livelihood and care, the typical race of the Paris streets, the modified gamin from ‘Les Miserables.’

“About a month after the appearance of my book I lay on the divan one day,—­your favorite place, you remember?—­and lost myself in idle reasonings on the same old subject that never left my mind day or night, when the bell rang and Adolphe appeared, to call for the essay on ‘Le Boulevarde.’  There was an unusually nervous gleam in his eyes that day.  I gave him an anisette and tried to find out what his trouble was.  I did find it out, and I found out a good deal more besides.