“That is a pity,” said Raynal, “for this chateau is the stronghold of etiquette.  They will be two hours dressing before they will come out and shake hands.  I must put my horse into the stable.  Go you and give the alarm.”

“I will, colonel.  Stop, first let me see whether none of them are up, after all.”

And Edouard walked round the chateau, and soon discovered a light at one window, the window of the tapestried room.  Running round the other way he came slap upon another light:  this one was nearer the ground.  A narrow but massive door, which he had always seen not only locked but screwed up, was wide open; and through the aperture the light of a candle streamed out and met the moonlight streaming in.

“Hallo!” cried Edouard.

He stopped, turned, and looked in.

“Hallo!” he cried again much louder.

A young woman was sleeping with her feet in the silvery moonlight, and her head in the orange-colored blaze of a flat candle, which rested on the next step above of a fine stone staircase, whose existence was now first revealed to the inquisitive Edouard.

Coming plump upon all this so unexpectedly, he quite started.

“Why, Jacintha!”

He touched her on the shoulder to wake her.  No.  Jacintha was sleeping as only tired domestics can sleep.  He might have taken the candle and burnt her gown off her back.  She had found a step that fitted into the small of her back, and another that supported her head, and there she was fast as a door.

At this moment Raynal’s voice was heard calling him.

“There is a light in that bedroom.”

“It is not a bedroom, colonel; it is our sitting-room now.  We shall find them all there, or at least the young ladies; and perhaps the doctor.  The baroness goes to bed early.  Meantime I can show you one of our dramatis personae, and an important one too.  She rules the roost.”

He took him mysteriously and showed him Jacintha.

Moonlight by itself seems white, and candlelight by itself seems yellow; but when the two come into close contrast at night, candle turns a reddish flame, and moonlight a bluish gleam.

So Jacintha, with her shoes in this celestial sheen, and her face in that demoniacal glare, was enough to knock the gazer’s eye out.

“Make a good sentinel—­this one,” said Raynal—­“an outlying picket for instance, on rough ground, in front of the enemy’s riflemen.”

“Ha! ha! colonel!  Let us see where this staircase leads.  I have an idea it will prove a short cut.”

“Where to?”

“To the saloon, or somewhere, or else to some of Jacintha’s haunts.  Serve her right for going to sleep at the mouth of her den.”

“Forward then—­no, halt!  Suppose it leads to the bedrooms?  Mind this is a thundering place for ceremony.  We shall get drummed out of the barracks if we don’t mind our etiquette.”

At this they hesitated; and Edouard himself thought, on the whole, it would be better to go and hammer at the front door.