Thereupon he entered his study, unassisted.
I walked to the little waiting-room with Blondel and took the parcel of papers. Blondel accompanied me to the door. But as I did not wish the President to remain alone on account of his ill-health, and because M. Le Gall was not there, I said to Blondel: "Don't trouble to let me out. I will leave the Elysée by the main door. Please hurry back to the President, for he seems far from well. It would be wise, perhaps, to send for a doctor...."
I left the Palace by the main gate in the Rue Saint Honoré. As soon as I was outside I realised that I was being shadowed as I had been so often before. But my faithful "agent" was there. I walked along the Avenue Marigny, reached the Champs Elysée, and called a _fiacre_. It was about six o'clock when I reached the Impasse Ronsin.
Towards midnight (I had been in bed for some time), I was awakened by the bell of the telephone in my room. It was M. Bordelongue, a director in the Ministry of _Postes et Telegraphes_, and an old friend.
And then I heard the news, the dreadful news: "The President is dead."
I could not believe what I heard. "It's impossible," I exclaimed. "I saw him to-day. He was tired, weak, upset, but there seemed to be nothing particularly wrong with his health." I asked Bordelongue all kinds of questions, but he merely replied: "Nothing is known. They say the President died of an apoplectic stroke."
The next morning at six o'clock I was told that my faithful "agent" wished to see me on a matter of importance. This "agent" did not belong to the _Sûreté_, or to the Ministry of the Interior, but was a private detective who had been specially selected and appointed by Félix Faure to keep guard over me wherever I went, and see that no harm befell me. (It should be remembered that during the Dreyfus affair Paris was in such a state of blind excitement and mad passion that in order to know the doings of certain persons, detectives were everywhere engaged. Indeed, before Félix Faure's mysterious death, France lived in conditions which reminded one to some extent of those that prevailed in Venice in the dreaded days of the Council of Ten.)
I guessed what the man came about, so I hastily dressed and met him.