One day, after the postman had called, my mother laid a letter upon my bed. I opened it carelessly, since it could not bear the one signature that would have made me happy, the name of Gilberte, with whom I had no relations outside the Champs-Élysées. And lo, at the foot of the page, embossed with a silver seal representing a man’s head in a helmet, and under him a scroll with the device Per viam rectam , beneath a letter written in a large and flowing hand, in which almost every word appeared to be underlined, simply because the crosses of the t