I had come down from the roof and was wandering in the vast nave from pillar to pillar, when I found myself beneath the lantern.  I raised my eyes, but the flood of golden light compelled me to close them.  The sunlight passing through the yellow glass of the windows overhead encircled the mighty vault of the lantern with a fiery crown, and played around the walls of its cage in rays which, growing fainter as they fell, flooded the floor with their expiring flames, a mysterious dayspring, a diffused glory, through which litany and sacred chant winged their way up toward the Infinite.

I left the cathedral tired out, dazed with weariness and sunlight, and fell asleep in a chair as soon as I got back to my room, on the fifth floor of the Albergo dell’ Agnello.

I had been asleep for about an hour, perhaps, when I thought I heard a voice near me repeating “Illustre Signore!”

I did not wake.  The voice continued with a murmur of sibilants: 

“Illustrissimo Signore!”

This drew me from my sleep, for the human ear is very susceptible to superlatives.

“What is it?”

“A letter for your lordship.  As it is marked ‘Immediate,’ I thought I might take the liberty of disturbing your lordship’s slumbers.”

“You did quite right, Tomaso.”

“You owe me eight sous, signore, which I paid for the postage.”

“There’s half a franc, keep the change.”

He retired calling me Monsieur le Comte; and all for two sous—­O fatherland of Brutus!  The letter was from Lampron, who had forgotten to put a stamp on it.

   “My dear friend: 

“Madame Plumet, to whom I believe you have given no instructions so to do, is at present busying herself considerably about your affairs.  I felt I ought to warn you, because she is all heart and no brains, and I have often seen before the trouble into which an overzealous friend may get one, especially if the friend be a woman.

   “I fear some serious indiscretion has been committed, for the
   following reasons.

“Yesterday evening Monsieur Plumet came to see me, and stood pulling furiously at his beard, which I know from experience is his way of showing that the world is not going around the right way for him.  By means of questions, I succeeded, after some difficulty, in dragging from him about half what he had to tell me.  The only thing which he made quite clear was his distress on finding that Madame Plumet was a woman whom it was hard to silence or to convince by argument.

   “It appears that she has gone back to her old trade of dress-making,
   and that one of her first customers—­God knows how she got there!—­
   was Mademoiselle Jeanne Charnot.

   “Well, last Monday Mademoiselle Jeanne was selecting a hat.  She was
   blithe as dawn, while the dressmaker was gloomy as night.