“No, I am sure I was not mistaken!  But never mind; we must see what it is.”

During this conversation, the door of the room had been open; and several of the lodgers, hearing the voice of the merchant and the exclamations of the woman as they crossed the hall, had stopped and listened.

“Yes, we must see what it is,” they repeated.

Master Chevassat dared no longer oppose the general desire so peremptorily expressed,—­

“Let us go then, since you will have it so,” he sighed.

And, taking up his lamp, he began to ascend the stairs, followed by the merchant, his wife, and five or six other persons.

The steps of all these people were heard all over the house; and from story to story the lodgers opened their doors to see what was going on.  And, when they heard that something was likely to happen, they almost all left their rooms, and followed the others.

So that Master Chevassat had nearly a dozen curious persons behind him, when he stopped on the fifth floor to take breath.

The door to Miss Henrietta’s room was the first on the left in the passage.  He knocked at first gently, then harder, and at last with all his energy, till his heavy fists shook the thin partition-walls of all the rooms.

Between each blow he cried,—­

“Miss Henrietta, Miss Henrietta, they want you!”

No reply came.

“Well!” he said triumphantly, “you see!”

But, whilst the man was knocking at the door, M. Ravinet had knelt down, and tried to open the door a little, putting now his eye, and now his ear, to the keyhole and to the slight opening between the door and the frame.

Suddenly he rose deadly pale.

“It is all over; we are too late!”

And, as the neighbors expressed some doubts, he cried furiously,—­

“Have you no noses?  Don’t you smell that abominable charcoal?”

Everybody tried to perceive the odor; and soon all agreed that he was right.  As the door had given way a little, the passage had gradually become filled with a sickening vapor.

The people shuddered; and a woman’s voice exclaimed,—­

“She has killed herself!”

As it happens strangely enough, but too frequently, in such cases, all hesitated.

“I am going for the police,” said at last Master Chevassat.

“That’s right!” replied the merchant.  “Now there is, perhaps, a chance yet to save the poor girl; and, when you come back, it will of course be too late.”

“What’s to be done, then?”

“Break in the door.”

“I dare not.”

“Well, I will.”

The kind-hearted man put his shoulder to the worm-eaten door, and in a moment the lock gave way.  The bystanders shrank instinctively back; they were frightened.  The door was wide open, and masses of vapors rolled out.  Soon, however, curiosity triumphed over fear.  No one doubted any longer that the poor girl was lying in there dead; and each one tried his best to see where she was.