"Then followed what you all know--the election, with its radical result and the threats which immediately succeeded, that 'Old Abe Lincoln' should never live to be inaugurated! 'He shall not!' cried the South. 'He shall!' replied the North. To us who knew something of the Spanish knife and the Italian stiletto, the probabilities seemed to be that he would never live to reach Washington. Then the mutterings of the thunder grew deeper and deeper, and some disruption seemed inevitable, evident to us far away, while you at home, it seemed, were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, holding gala-days and enjoying yourselves generally, on the brink of an arousing volcano from which the sulphurous smoke already began to ascend to the heavens! So time passed on; autumn became winter, and December was rolling away.
"I was sitting with half-a-dozen friends in the chess-room at Very's, about eleven o'clock on the night of the twentieth of December, talking over some of the marvellous successes which had been won by Paul Morphy when in Paris, and the unenviable position in which Howard Staunton had placed himself by keeping out of the lists through evident fear of the New-Orleanian, when Adolph Von Berg came behind me and laid his hand on my shoulder.
"'Come with me a moment,' he said, 'you are wanted!'
"'Where?' I asked, getting up from my seat and following him to the door, before which stood a light _coupé_, with its red lights flashing, the horse smoking, and the driver in his seat.
"'I have been to-night to the Rue la Reynie Ogniard!' he answered.
"'And are you going there again?' I asked, my blood chilling a little with an indefinable sensation of terror, but a sense of satisfaction predominating at the opportunity of seeing something more of the mysterious woman.
"'I am!' he answered, 'and so are _you_! She has sent for you! Come!'
"Without another word I stepped into the _coupé_, and we were rapidly whirled away. I asked Adolph how and why I had been summoned; but he knew nothing more than myself, except that he had visited the sorceress at between nine and ten that evening, that she had only spoken to him for an instant, but ordered him to go at once and find his friend, _the American_, whom he had falsely introduced some months before as the English baron. He had been irresistibly impressed with the necessity of obedience, though it would break in upon his own arrangements for the later evening, (which included an hour at the Chateau Rouge;) had picked up a _coupé_, looked in for me at two or three places where he thought me most likely to be at that hour in the evening, and had found me at Very's, as related. What the sorceress could possibly want of me, he had no more idea than myself; but he reminded me that she had hinted at the possible necessity of sending for me at no distant period, and I remembered the fact too well to need the reminder.