The man who sought to enter interpreted their silence as he pleased; he suddenly opened the door and showed himself.  The two nuns trembled when they recognized the individual who for some days had watched the house and seemed to make inquiries about its inmates.  They stood quite still and looked at him with uneasy curiosity, like the children of savages examining a being of another sphere.  The stranger was very tall and stout, but nothing in his manner or appearance denoted that he was a bad man.  He copied the immobility of the sisters and stood motionless, letting his eye rove slowly round the room.

Two bundles of straw placed on two planks served as beds for the nuns.  A table was in the middle of the room; upon it a copper candlestick, a few plates, three knives, and a round loaf of bread.  The fire on the hearth was very low, and a few sticks of wood piled in a corner of the room testified to the poverty of the occupants.  The walls, once covered with a coat of paint now much defaced, showed the wretched condition of the roof through which the rain had trickled, making a network of brown stains.  A sacred relic, saved no doubt from the pillage of the Abbaye des Chelles, adorned the mantel-shelf of the chimney.  Three chairs, two coffers, and a broken chest of drawers completed the furniture of the room.  A doorway cut near the fireplace showed there was probably an inner chamber.

The inventory of this poor cell was soon made by the individual who had presented himself under such alarming auspices.  An expression of pity crossed his features, and as he threw a kind glance upon the frightened women he seemed as much embarrassed as they.  The strange silence in which they all three stood and faced each other lasted but a moment; for the stranger seemed to guess the moral weakness and inexperience of the poor helpless creatures, and he said, in a voice which he strove to render gentle, “I have not come as an enemy, citoyennes.”

Then he paused, but resumed:—­“My sisters, if harm should ever happen to you, be sure that I shall not have contributed to it.  I have come to ask a favor of you.”

They still kept silence.

“If I ask too much—­if I annoy you—­I will go away; but believe me, I am heartily devoted to you, and if there is any service that I could render you, you may employ me without fear.  I, and I alone, perhaps, am above law—­since there is no longer a king.”

The ring of truth in these words induced Sister Agatha, a nun belonging to the ducal house of Langeais, and whose manners indicated that she had once lived amid the festivities of life and breathed the air of courts, to point to a chair as if she asked their guest to be seated.  The unknown gave vent to an expression of joy, mingled with melancholy, as he understood this gesture.  He waited respectfully till the sisters were seated, and then obeyed it.

“You have given shelter,” he said, “to a venerable priest not sworn in by the Republic, who escaped miraculously from the massacre at the Convent of the Carmelites.”