Coquenil believed that they were words of wisdom, and without a moment’s hesitation, he acted on that belief.  The wall underneath the shelf was half covered with piled-up logs and these must be removed; which meant that he must work there for several minutes with the fierce breath of the fire hissing over him.

It was the work of a madman, or of one inspired.  Three times Coquenil fell to the floor, gasping for breath, blinded by the flames that were roaring all about him, poisoned by deadly fumes.  The skin on his arms and neck was hanging away in shreds, the pain was unbearable, yet he bore it, the task was impossible, yet he did it.

At last the space under the shelf was cleared, and staggering, blackened, blinded, yet believing, Paul Coquenil stumbled forward and seized the left-hand bracket in his two bruised hands and pressed it with all his might.

Instantly a door underneath, cunningly hidden in the wall, yawned open on a square black passage.

“It’s here that the fairies play,” muttered M. Paul, “and it’s a mighty good place for us!”

With a bound he was back at the shelter and had Alice in his arms, smiling again, as she slept—­as she dreamed.  And a moment later he had carried her safely through flames that actually singed her hair, and laid her tenderly in the cool passage. And beside her he laid the baron’s diary!

[Illustration:  “And a moment later he had carried her safely through the flames.”]

Then he went back to close the door.  It was high time, for the last obstructing logs of the old barricade had fallen and the chamber was a seething mass of fire.

“I feel pretty rotten,” reflected Coquenil with a whimsical smile.  “My hair is burned off and my eyebrows are gone and about half my skin, but—­I guess I’ll take a chance on a burn or two more and rescue Esmeralda!”

Whereupon he reached up inside that fiery furnace and, groping over the hot stone shelf, brought down a scorched and battered and dust-covered little figure that had lain there for many years.

It was the lost dolly!

CHAPTER XXX

MRS. LLOYD KITTREDGE

The details of the hours that followed remained blurred memories in the minds of Alice and her rescuer.  There was, first, a period of utter blank when Coquenil, overcome by the violence of his struggle and the agony of his burns, fell unconscious near the unconscious girl.  How long they lay thus in the dark playground of the fairies, so near the raging fire, yet safe from it, was never known exactly; nor how long they wandered afterwards through a strange subterranean region of passages and cross passages, that widened and narrowed, that ascended and descended, that were sometimes smooth under foot, but oftener blocked with rough stones and always black as night.  The fairies must have been sorry at their plight, for, indeed, it was a pitiable one; bruised, blistered, covered with grime and with little else, they stumbled on aimlessly, cutting their bare feet, falling often in sheer weakness, and lying for minutes where they fell before they could summon strength to stumble on.  Surely no more pathetic pair than these two ever braved the mazes of the Paris catacombs!