n the Place du Lion
d'Or." Whereupon he looked surprised, and observed that he knew of no
house there fit for us, "except, indeed," he added, "the one that has
been long uninhabited on account of the _revenant_ that walks about it."

He said this quite seriously, and in a natural tone of voice; in spite
of which we laughed, and were quite entertained at the idea of a ghost;
but, at the same time, we begged him not to mention the thing to our
servants, lest they should take any fancies into their heads; and my
mother and I resolved to say nothing about the matter to anyone. "I
suppose it is the ghost," said my mother, laughing, "that wakes us so
often by walking over our heads." We had, in fact, been awakened several
nights by a heavy foot, which we supposed to be that of one of the
men-servants, of whom we had three English and four French. The English
ones, men and women, every one of them, returned ultimately to England
with us.

A night or two afterwards, being again awakened by the step, my mother
asked Creswell: "Who slept in the room above us?" "No one, my lady," she
replied, "it is a large empty garret."

About a week or ten days after this, Creswell came to my mother, one
morning, and told her that all the French servants talked of going away,
because there was a _revenant_ in the house; adding, that there seemed
to be a strange story attached to the place, which was said, together
with some other property, to have belonged to a young man, whose
guardian, who was also his uncle, had treated him cruelly, and confined
him in an iron cage; and as he had subsequently disappeared, it was
conjectured he had been murdered. This uncle, after inheriting the
property, had suddenly quitted the house, and sold it to the father of
the man of whom we had hired it. Since that period, though it had been
several times let, nobody had ever stayed in it above a week or two;
and, for a considerable time past, it had had no tenant at all.

"And do you really believe all this nonsense, Creswell?" said my mother.

"Well, I don't know, my lady," answered she, "but there is the iron cage
in the garret over your bedroom, where you may see it, if you please."

Of course we rose to go, and just at that moment an old officer, with
his Croix de St Louis, called on us, we invited him to accompany us, and
we ascended together. We found, as Creswell had said, a large empty
garret, with bare brick walls, and in the further corner of it stoo