“My dear sir,” he stuttered, trying to recover this suave irony, “I warned you not to interfere in our affairs and you have not obeyed me.  You may now take the consequences of your lack of discretion.”

He gave an order, and the old man felt himself pushed downstairs to the cellars underneath the castle.  Those conducting him were soldiers under the command of a petty officer whom he recognized as the Socialist.  This young professor was the only one sober, but he maintained himself erect and unapproachable with the ferocity of discipline.

He put his prisoner into an arched vault without any breathing-place except a tiny window on a level with the floor.  Many broken bottles and chests with some straw were all that was in the cave.

“You have insulted a head officer!” said the official roughly, “and they will probably shoot you to-morrow.  Your only salvation lies in the continuance of the revels, in which case they may forget you.”

As the door of this sub-cellar was broken, like all the others in the building, a pile of boxes and furniture was heaped in the entrance way.

Don Marcelo passed the rest of the night tormented with the cold—­the only thing which worried him just then.  He had abandoned all hope of life; even the images of his family seemed blotted from his memory.  He worked in the dark in order to make himself more comfortable on the chests, burrowing down into the straw for the sake of its heat.  When the morning breeze began to sift in through the little window he fell slowly into a heavy, overpowering sleep, like that of criminals condemned to death, or duellists before the fatal morning.  He thought he heard shouts in German, the galloping of horses, a distant sound of tattoo and whistle such as the battalions of the invaders made with their fifes and drums. . . .  Then he lost all consciousness of his surroundings.

On opening his eyes again a ray of sunlight, slipping through the window, was tracing a little golden square on the wall, giving a regal splendor to the hanging cobwebs.  Somebody was removing the barricade before the door.  A woman’s voice, timid and distressed, was calling repeatedly: 

“Master, are you here?”

He sprang up quickly, wishing to aid the worker outside, and pushing vigorously.  He thought that the invaders must have left.  In no other way could he imagine the Warden’s wife daring to try to get him out of his cell.

“Yes, they have gone,” she said.  “Nobody is left in the castle.”

As soon as he was able to get out Don Marcelo looked inquiringly at the woman with her bloodshot eyes, dishevelled hair and sorrow-drawn face.  The night had weighed her down pitilessly with the pressure of many years.  All the energy with which she had been working to free Desnoyers disappeared on seeing him again.  “Oh, Master . . .  Master,” she moaned convulsively; and she flung herself into his arms, bursting into tears.