His rage and agitation were so intense that it was with the utmost difficulty that he concealed it.

Luckily for him, Gaston was not paying the slightest attention to his companion; for having, at the clerk's invitation, taken a chair, he assumed an imposing attitude, which struck the shabby young man behind the railing with the deepest admiration.
"I suppose," said he, in a loud voice, "that you know my dear friend, the Marquis ?" Andre made some reply, which Gaston interpreted as a negative.
"Really," said he, "you know _no_ one, as I told you before.

Where have you lived?
But you must have heard of him?
Henri de Croisenois is one of my most intimate friends.

He owes me over fifty louis that I won of him one night at baccarat." Andre was now certain that he had estimated Verminet's character correctly, and the relations of the Marquis de Croisenois with this very equivocal personage assumed a meaning of great significance to him.

He felt now that he had gained a clue, a beacon blazed out before him, and he saw his way more clearly into the difficult windings of this labyrinth of iniquity which he knew that he must penetrate before he gained the secret he longed for.
He felt like a child playing the game called "Magic Music," when, as the seeker nears the hiding place of the article of which he is in search, the strains of the piano swell higher and higher.