The deepest silence reigned in the room, at the moment when Samuel placed the register on the table.  Suddenly a simple and yet most startling occurrence roused him from his reverie.  In the next apartment was heard the clear, silvery tone of a clock, striking slowly ten.  And the hour was ten!  Samuel had too much sense to believe in perpetual motion, or in the possibility of constructing a clock to go far one hundred and fifty years.  He asked himself, therefore, with surprise and alarm, how this clock could still be going, and how it could mark so exactly the hour of the day.  Urged with restless curiosity, the old man was about to enter the room; but recollecting the recommendation of his father, which had now been confirmed by the few lines he had just read from De Rennepont’s pen, he stopped at the door, and listened with extreme attention.

He heard nothing—­absolutely nothing, but the last dying vibration of the clock.  After having long reflected upon this strange fact, Samuel, comparing it with the no less extraordinary circumstance of the light perceived that morning through the apertures in the belvedere, concluded that there must be some connection between these two incidents.  If the old man could not penetrate the true cause of these extraordinary appearances, he at least explained them to himself, by remembering the subterraneous communications, which, according to tradition, were said to exist between the cellars of this house and distant places; and he conjectured that unknown and mysterious personages thus gained access to it two or three times in a century.  Absorbed in these thoughts Samuel approached the fireplace, which, as we have said, was directly opposite the window.  Just then, a bright ray of sunlight, piercing the clouds, shone full upon two large portraits, hung upon either side of the fireplace, and not before remarked by the Jew.  They were painted life size, and represented one a woman, the other a man.  By the sober yet powerful coloring of these paintings, by the large and vigorous style, it was easy to recognize a master’s hand.  It would have been difficult to find models more fitted to inspire a great painter.  The woman appeared to be from five-and-twenty to thirty years of age.  Magnificent brown hair, with golden tints, crooned a forehead, white, noble, and lofty.  Her head-dress, far from recalling the fashion, which Madame de Sevigne brought in during the age of Louis XIV., reminded one rather of some of the portraits of Paul Veronese, in which the hair encircles the face in broad, undulating bands, surmounted by a thick plait, like a crown, at the back of the head.  The eyebrows, finely pencilled, were arched over large eyes of bright, sapphire blue.  Their gaze at once proud and mournful, had something fatal about it.  The nose, finely formed, terminated in slight dilated nostrils:  a half smile, almost of pain, contracted the mouth; the face was a long oval, and the complexion, extremely pale, was hardly shaded on the cheek by a light rose-color.  The position of the head and neck announced a rare mixture of grace and dignity.  A sort of tunic or robe, of glossy black material, came as high as the commencement of her shoulders, and just marking her lithe and tall figure, reached down to her feet, which were almost entirely concealed by the folds of this garment.