ace about the night's adventures.

We had indeed reason to feel flattered at the success of the dangerous
expedition. Had we not captured, more by sheer good luck than strategy,
the only piano-tuner in mediaeval France?

XII

THE TRAGIC WALL

I

BY THE DARK POOL

It was not so high, the wall, as massive, not so old as moss-covered.
After Rudolph Cot, the painter, had achieved celebrity with his
historical canvas, The Death of the Antique World, now in the Louvre, he
bought the estate of Chalfontaine, which lies at the junction of two
highroads: one leading to Ecouen, the other to Villiers-le-Bel. Almost
touching the end of the park on the Ecouen side there is a little lake,
hardly larger than a pool, and because of its melancholy
aspect--sorrowful willows hem it about, drooping into stagnant
waters--Monsieur Cot had christened the spot: The Dark Tarn of Auber. He
was a fanatical lover of Poe, reading him in the Baudelaire translation,
and openly avowing his preference for the French version of the great
American's tales. That he could speak only five words of English did not
deter his associates from considering him a profound critic of
literature.

After his death his property and invested wealth passed into the hands
of his youthful widow, a charming lady, a native of Burgundy, and--if
gossip did not lie--a former model of the artist; indeed, some went so
far as to assert that her face could be seen in her late husband's
masterpiece--the figure of a young Greek slave attired as a joyous
bacchante. But her friends always denied this. Her dignified bearing,
sincere sorrow for her dead husband, and her motherly solicitude for her
daughter left no doubt as to the value of all petty talk. It was her
custom of summer evenings to walk to the pool, and with her daughter
Berenice she would sit on the broad wall and watch the moon rise, or
acknowledge the respectful salutations of the country folk with their
bran-speckled faces. In those days Villiers-le-Bel was a dull town a
half-hour from Paris on the Northern Railway, and about two miles from
the station.

The widow was not long without offers. Her usual answer was to point out
the tiny Berenice, playing in the garden with her nurse. Then a
landscape painter, one of the Barbizon group, appeared, and, as a former
associate of Rudolph Cot, and a man of means and position, his suit was
successful. To the astonishment of Villiers-le-Bel, Madame Valerie Cot
be