CHAPTER LIX.

What was passing in the mysterious house.

While the hotel of the “Brave Chevalier,” the abode, apparently, of the most perfect concord, with closed doors and open cellars, showed through the openings of the shutters the light of its candles and the mirth of its guests, an unaccustomed movement took place in that mysterious house of which our readers have as yet only seen the outside.

The servant was going from one room to another, carrying packages which he placed in a trunk.  These preparations over, he loaded a pistol, examined his poniard, then suspended it, by the aid of a ring, to the chain which served him for a belt, to which he attached besides a bunch of keys and a book of prayers bound in black leather.

While he was thus occupied, a step, light as that of a shadow, came up the staircase, and a woman, pale and phantom-like under the folds of her white veil, appeared at the door, and a voice, sad and sweet as the song of a bird in the wood, said:  “Remy, are you ready?”

“Yes, madame, I only wait for your box.”

“Do you think these boxes will go easily on our horses?”

“Oh! yes, madame, but if you have any fear, I can leave mine; I have all I want there.”

“No, no, Remy, take all that you want for the journey.  Oh!  Remy!  I long to be with my father; I have sad presentiments, and it seems an age since I saw him.”

“And yet, madame, it is but three months; not a longer interval than usual.”

“Remy, you are such a good doctor, and you yourself told me, the last time we quitted him, that he had not long to live.”

“Yes, doubtless; but it was only a dread, not a prediction.  Sometimes death seems to forget old men, and they live on as though by the habit of living; and often, besides, an old man is like a child, ill to-day and well to-morrow.”

“Alas!  Remy, like the child also, he is often well to-day and dead to-morrow.”

Remy did not reply, for he had nothing really reassuring to say, and silence succeeded for some minutes.

“At what hour have you ordered the horses?” said the lady, at last.

“At two o’clock.”

“And one has just struck.”

“Yes, madame.”

“No one is watching outside?”

“No one.”

“Not even that unhappy young man?”

“Not even he.”

And Remy sighed.

“You say that in a strange manner, Remy.”

“Because he also has made a resolution.”

“What is it?”

“To see us no more; at least, not to try to see us any more.”

“And where is he going?”

“Where we are all going—­to rest.”.

“God give it him eternally,” said the lady, in a cold voice, “and yet—­”

“Yet what, madame?”

“Had he nothing to do here?”