I dressed speedily and went down-stairs.  The inn-room was deserted save for Maitre Jacques, who, with heat, demanded of me whether I took myself for a prince, that I lay in bed till all decent folk had been hours about their business, and then expected breakfast.  However, he brought me a meal, and I made no complaint that it was a poor one.

“You have strange neighbours in the house opposite,” said I.

He started, and the thin wine he was setting before me splashed over on the table.

“What neighbours?”

“Why, they who close their shutters when other folks would keep them open, and open them when others keep them shut,” I said airily.  “Last night I saw three men in the window opposite mine.”

He laughed.

“Aha, my lad, your head is not used to our Paris wines.  That is how you came to see visions.”

“Nonsense,” I cried, nettled.  “Your wine is too well watered for that, let me tell you, Maitre Jacques.”

“Then you dreamed it,” he said huffily.  “The proof is that no one has lived in that house these twenty years.”

Now, I had plenty to trouble about without troubling my head over night-hawks, but I was vexed with him for putting me off.  So, with a fine conceit of my own shrewdness, I said: 

“If it was only a dream, how came you to spill the wine?”

He gave me a keen glance, and then, with a look round to see that no one was by, leaned across the table, up to me.

“You are sharp as a gimlet,” said he.  “I see I may as well tell you first as last.  Marry, an you will have it, the place is haunted.”

“Holy Virgin!” I cried, crossing myself.

“Aye.  Twenty years ago, in the great massacre—­you know naught of that:  you were not born, I take it, and, besides, are a country boy.  But I was here, and I know.  A man dared not stir out of doors that dark day.  The gutters ran blood.”

“And that house—­what happened in that house?”

“Why, it was the house of a Huguenot gentleman, M. de Bethune,” he answered, bringing out the name hesitatingly in a low voice.  “They were all put to the sword—­the whole household.  It was Guise’s work.  The Duc de Guise sat on his white horse, in this very street here, while it was going on.  Parbleu! that was a day.”

“Mon dieu! yes.”

“Well, that is an old story now,” he resumed in a different tone.  “One-and-twenty years ago, that was.  Such things don’t happen now.  But the people, they have not forgotten; they will not go near that house.  No one will live there.”

“And have others seen as well as I?”

“So they say.  But I’ll not let it be talked of on my premises.  Folk might get to think them too near the haunted house.  ’Tis another matter with you, though, since you have had the vision.”

“There were three men,” I said, “young men, in sombre dress—­”

“M. de Bethune and his cousins.  What further?  Did you hear shrieks?”