“How foolish!” he said with vexation, “I ought to have brought my instruments with me.  A common lock which could be opened with a nail, and I have not even a piece of wire!”

Thinking it useless to attempt the door, he tried successively every window on the ground-floor.  Alas! each blind was securely fastened on the inside.

M. Verduret was provoked.  He prowled around the house like a fox around a hen-coop, seeking an entrance, but finding none.  Despairingly he came back to the spot in front of the house, whence he had the best view of the lighted window.

“If I could only look in,” he cried.  “Just to think that in there,” and he pointed to the window, “is the solution of the mystery; and we are cut off from it by thirty or forty feet of cursed blank wall!”

Prosper was more surprised than ever at his companion’s strange behavior.  He seemed perfectly at home in this garden; he ran about without any precaution; so that one would have supposed him accustomed to such expeditions, especially when he spoke of picking the lock of an occupied house, as if he were talking of opening a snuff-box.  He was utterly indifferent to the rain and sleet driven in his face by the gusts of wind as he splashed about in the mud trying to find some way of entrance.

“I must get a peep into that window,” he said, “and I will, cost what it may!”

Prosper seemed to suddenly remember something.

“There is a ladder here,” he cried.

“Why did you not tell me that before?  Where is it?”

“At the end of the garden, under the trees.”

They ran to the spot, and in a few minutes had the ladder standing against the wall.

But to their chagrin they found the ladder six feet too short.  Six long feet of wall between the top of the ladder and the lighted window was a very discouraging sight to Prosper; he exclaimed: 

“We cannot reach it.”

“We can reach it,” cried M. Verduret triumphantly.

And he quickly placed himself a yard off from the house, and, seizing the ladder, cautiously raised it and rested the bottom round on his shoulders, at the same time holding the two uprights firmly and steadily with his hands.  The obstacle was overcome.

“Now mount,” he said to his companion.

Prosper did not hesitate.  The enthusiasm of difficulties so skilfully conquered, and the hope of triumph, gave him a strength and agility which he had never imagined he possessed.  He made a sudden spring, and, seizing the lower rounds, quickly climbed up the ladder, which swayed and trembled beneath his weight.

But he had scarcely looked in the lighted window when he uttered a cry which was drowned in the roaring tempest, and dropped like a log down on the wet grass, exclaiming: 

“The villain! the villain!”

With wonderful promptness and vigor M. Verduret laid the ladder on the ground, and ran toward Prosper, fearing that he was dead or dangerously injured.