were open, all but the office of the _octroi_ which was black
as night with its closed door. M. le Cure has told me since that he
believed Them to be there, though unseen. This idea, however, was not in
my mind. I had felt the unseen multitude; but here the air was free,
there was no one interposing between us, who breathed as men, and the
walls that surrounded us. Just within the gate a lamp was burning,
hanging to its rope over our heads; and the lights were in the houses as
if some one had left them there; they threw a strange glimmer into the
darkness, flickering in the wind. By and by as we went on the gloom
lessened, and by the time we had reached the Grande Rue, there was a
clear steady pale twilight by which we saw everything, as by the light
of day.

We stood at the corner of the square and looked round. Although still I
heard the beating of my own pulses loudly working in my ears, yet it was
less terrible than at first. A city when asleep is wonderful to look on,
but in all the closed doors and windows one feels the safety and repose
sheltered there which no man can disturb; and the air has in it a sense
of life, subdued, yet warm. But here all was open, and all deserted. The
house of the miser Grosgain was exposed from the highest to the lowest,
but nobody was there to search for what was hidden. The hotel de
Bois-Sombre, with its great _porte-cochere,_ always so jealously closed;
and my own house, which my mother and wife have always guarded so
carefully, that no damp nor breath of night might enter, had every door
and window wide open. Desolation seemed seated in all these empty
places. I feared to go into my own dwelling. It seemed to me as if the
dead must be lying within. _Bon Dieu!_ Not a soul, not a shadow; all
vacant in this soft twilight; nothing moving, nothing visible. The great
doors of the Cathedral were wide open, and every little entry. How
spacious the city looked, how silent, how wonderful! There was room for
a squadron to wheel in the great square, but not so much as a bird, not
a dog; all pale and empty. We stood for a long time (or it seemed a long
time) at the corner, looking right and left. We were afraid to make a
step farther. We knew not what to do. Nor could I speak; there was much
I wished to say, but something stopped my voice.

At last M. le Cure found utterance. His voice so moved the silence, that
at first my heart was faint with fear; it was hoarse, and the sound
rolled round