“Very well, sir; I will make haste,” answered the clerk, discontentedly, as he followed his master, who hurried back into the room where he had left Rodin, Gabriel, and Father d’Aigrigny.

During this time, Samuel, ascending the steps, had reached the door, now disencumbered of the stone, iron, and lead with which it had been blocked up.  It was with deep emotion that the old man having selected from his bunch of keys the one he wanted, inserted it in the keyhole, and made the door turn upon its hinges.  Immediately he felt on his face a current of damp, cold air, like that which exhales from a cellar suddenly opened.  Having carefully re-closed and double-locked the door, the Jew advanced along the hall, lighted by a glass trefoil over the arch of the door.  The panes had lost their transparency by the effect of time, and now had the appearance of ground-glass.  This hall, paved with alternate squares of black and white marble, was vast, sonorous, and contained a broad staircase leading to the first story.  The walls of smooth stone offered not the least appearance of decay or dampness; the stair-rail of wrought iron presented no traces of rust; it was inserted, just above the bottom step, into a column of gray granite, which sustained a statue of black marble, representing a negro bearing a flambeau.  This statue had a strange countenance, the pupils of the eyes being made of white marble.

The Jew’s heavy tread echoed beneath the lofty dome of the hall.  The grandson of Isaac Samuel experienced a melancholy feeling, as he reflected that the footsteps of his ancestor had probably been the last which had resounded through this dwelling, of which he had closed the doors a hundred and fifty years before; for the faithful friend, in favor of whom M. de Rennepont had made a feigned transfer of the property, had afterwards parted with the same, to place it in the name of Samuel’s grandfather, who had transmitted it to his descendants, as if it had been his own inheritance.

To these thoughts, in which Samuel was wholly absorbed, was joined the remembrance of the light seen that morning through the seven openings in the leaden cover of the belvedere; and, in spite of the firmness of his character, the old man could not repress a shudder, as, taking a second key from his bunch, and reading upon the label, The Key of the Red Room, he opened a pair of large folding doors, leading to the inner apartments.  The window which, of all those in the house, had alone been opened, lighted this large room, hung with damask, the deep purple of which had undergone no alteration.  A thick Turkey carpet covered the floor, and large arm-chairs of gilded wood, in the severe Louis XIV. style, were symmetrically arranged along the wall.  A second door, leading to the next room, was just opposite the entrance.  The wainscoting and the cornice were white, relieved with fillets and mouldings of burnished gold.  On each side of this door was a large piece of buhl-furniture,