it open, and disappeared, leaving the husband and wife dumfounded
and quaking with fright.

Once outside in the street, she started away at a quick walk; but her
strength soon failed her. She heard the sound of the snow crunching
under a heavy step, and knew that the pitiless spy was on her track. She
was obliged to stop. He stopped likewise. From sheer terror, or lack
of intelligence, she did not dare to speak or to look at him. She went
slowly on; the man slackened his pace and fell behind so that he could
still keep her in sight. He might have been her very shadow.

Nine o'clock struck as the silent man and woman passed again by the
Church of Saint Laurent. It is in the nature of things that calm must
succeed to violent agitation, even in the weakest soul; for if feeling
is infinite, our capacity to feel is limited. So, as the stranger lady
met with no harm from her supposed persecutor, she tried to look upon
him as an unknown friend anxious to protect her. She thought of all the
circumstances in which the stranger had appeared, and put them together,
as if to find some ground for this comforting theory, and felt inclined
to credit him with good intentions rather than bad.

Forgetting the fright that he had given the pastry-cook, she walked on
with a firmer step through the upper end of the Faubourg Saint Martin;
and another half-hour's walk brought her to a house at the corner where
the road to the Barriere de Pantin turns off from the main thoroughfare.
Even at this day, the place is one of the least frequented parts of
Paris. The north wind sweeps over the Buttes-Chaumont and Belleville,
and whistles through the houses (the Hovels rather), scattered over an
almost uninhabited low-lying waste, Where the fences are heaps of earth
and bones. It was a desolate-looking place, a fitting refuge for despair
and misery.

The sight of it appeared to make an impression upon the relentless
pursuer of a poor creature so daring as to walk alone at night through
the silent streets. He stood in thought, and seemed by his attitude to
hesitate. She could see him dimly now, under the street lamp that sent a
faint, flickering light through the fog. Fear gave her eyes. She saw, or
thought she saw, something sinister about the stranger's features. Her
old terrors awoke; she took advantage of a kind of hesitation on his
part, slipped through the shadows to the door of the solitary house,
pressed a spring, and vanished swiftly as a ph