Now while they hesitated, a soft delicious harmony of female voices suddenly rose, and seemed to come and run round the walls.  The men looked at one another in astonishment; for the effect was magical.  The staircase being enclosed on all sides with stone walls and floored with stone, they were like flies inside a violoncello; the voices rang above, below, and on every side of the vibrating walls.  In some epochs spirits as hardy as Raynal’s, and wits as quick as Riviere’s, would have fled then and there to the nearest public, and told over cups how they had heard the dames of Beaurepaire, long since dead, holding their revel, and the conscious old devil’s nest of a chateau quivering to the ghostly strains.

But this was an incredulous age.  They listened, and listened, and decided the sounds came from up-stairs.

“Let us mount, and surprise these singing witches,” said Edouard.

“Surprise them! what for?  It is not the enemy—­for once.  What is the good of surprising our friends?”

Storming parties and surprises were no novelty and therefore no treat to Raynal.

“It will be so delightful to see their faces at first sight of you.  O colonel, for my sake!  Don’t spoil it by going tamely in at the front door, after coming at night from Egypt for half an hour.”

Raynal grumbled something about its being a childish trick; but to please Edouard consented at last; only stipulated for a light:  “or else,” said he, “we shall surprise ourselves instead with a broken neck, going over ground we don’t know to surprise the natives—­our skirmishers got nicked that way now and then in Egypt.”

“Yes, colonel, I will go first with Jacintha’s candle.”  Edouard mounted the stairs on tiptoe.  Raynal followed.  The solid stone steps did not prate.  The men had mounted a considerable way, when puff a blast of wind came through a hole, and out went Edouard’s candle.  He turned sharply round to Raynal.  “Peste!” said he in a vicious whisper.  But the other laid his hand on his shoulder and whispered, “Look to the front.”  He looked, and, his own candle being out, saw a glimmer on ahead.  He crept towards it.  It was a taper shooting a feeble light across a small aperture.  They caught a glimpse of what seemed to be a small apartment.  Yet Edouard recognized the carpet of the tapestried room—­which was a very large room.  Creeping a yard nearer, he discovered that it was the tapestried room, and that what had seemed the further wall was only the screen, behind which were lights, and two women singing a duet.

He whispered to Raynal, “It is the tapestried room.”

“Is it a sitting-room?” whispered Raynal.

“Yes! yes!  Mind and not knock your foot against the wood.”

And Raynal went softly up and put his foot quietly through the aperture, which he now saw was made by a panel drawn back close to the ground; and stood in the tapestried chamber.  The carpet was thick; the voices favored the stealthy advance; the floor of the old house was like a rock; and Edouard put his face through the aperture, glowing all over with anticipation of the little scream of joy that would welcome his friend dropping in so nice and suddenly from Egypt.