Excerpt from Mirabelle of Pampeluna It was scarcely eight o'clock in the morning, and Monsieur Henri, the clerk, was rearranging the set of Balzac, misplaced by a bibliophile the evening before, on the shelves of the book-shop, when the door-bell rang. An immense overcoat topped by a soft, very wide-brimmed hat rushed into the passage. Monsieur Henri was startled and said: "Oh! Monsieur des Assernes!" "I am he," said the strange person with the travelling-bag. "I came on the train from Toulouse. Is Monsieur Duval down-stairs yet? No? Nor Madame Duval either? Nor mademoiselle?" "I will tell them that you have come, monsieur." Monsieur Henri, the clerk, with his long white smock like those worn by druggist's apprentices, had an unassuming manner. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.