“Do you still wish to join M. le Duc?” he said.

“Father!” was all I could gasp.

“Then you shall go,” he answered.  That was not bad for an old man who had lost two sons for Monsieur!

I set out in the morning, light of baggage, purse, and heart.  I can tell naught of the journey, for I heeded only that at the end of it lay Paris.  I reached the city one day at sundown, and entered without a passport at the St. Denis gate, the warders being hardly so strict as Mayenne supposed.  I was dusty, foot-sore, and hungry, in no guise to present myself before Monsieur; wherefore I went no farther that night than the inn of the Amour de Dieu, in the Rue des Coupejarrets.

Far below my garret window lay the street—­a trench between the high houses.  Scarce eight feet off loomed the dark wall of the house opposite.  To me, fresh from the wide woods of St. Quentin, it seemed the desire of Paris folk to outhuddle in closeness the rabbits in a warren.  So ingenious were they at contriving to waste no inch of open space that the houses, standing at the base but a scant street’s width apart, ever jutted out farther at each story till they looked to be fairly toppling together.  I could see into the windows up and down the way; see the people move about within; hear opposite neighbours call to each other.  But across from my aery were no lights and no people, for that house was shuttered tight from attic to cellar, its dark front as expressionless as a blind face.  I marvelled how it came to stand empty in that teeming quarter.

Too tired, however, to wonder long, I blew out the candle, and was asleep before I could shut my eyes.

* * * * *

Crash!  Crash!  Crash!

I sprang out of bed in a panic, thinking Henry of Navarre was bombarding
Paris.  Then, being fully roused, I perceived that the noise was thunder.

From the window I peered into floods of rain.  The peals died away.  Suddenly came a terrific lightning-flash, and I cried out in astonishment.  For the shutter opposite was open, and I had a vivid vision of three men in the window.

Then all was dark again, and the thunder shook the roof.

I stood straining my eyes into the night, waiting for the next flash.  When it came it showed me the window barred as before.  Flash followed flash; I winked the rain from my eyes and peered in vain.  The shutter remained closed as if it had never been opened.  Sleep rolled over me in a great wave as I groped my way back to bed.

II

At the Amour de Dieu.

When I woke in the morning, the sun was shining broadly into the room, glinting in the little pools of water on the floor.  I stared at them, sleepy-eyed, till recollection came to me of the thunder-storm and the open shutter and the three men.  I jumped up and ran to the window.  The shutters opposite were closed; the house just as I had seen it first, save for the long streaks of wet down the wall.  The street below was one vast puddle.  At all events, the storm was no dream, as I half believed the vision to be.