tain steps, always looking behind it. By the moonlight I
recognised the Marquis de la Fare. I expected that he would be passing.
I knew where he was gliding to. Scarcely had he got ten or twelve paces
beyond me, when, out of the ground apparently, springs a figure, dashes
the Marquis to the ground, falls down upon him. Losing my self-command
at this occurrence, which seemed to be likely to deliver the murderer
into my hands, I cried out aloud, and meant to spring from my
hiding-place with a great jump and seize hold of him. But I tripped up
in my cloak and fell down. I saw the fellow flee away as if on the
wings of the wind; I picked myself up, and made off after him as fast
as I could. As I ran, I sounded my horn. Out of the distance the
whistles of my men answered me. Things grew lively--clatter of arms,
tramp of horses on all sides. 'Here!--come to me!--Desgrais!' I cried,
till the streets re-echoed. All the time I saw the man before me in the
bright moonlight, turning off right--left--to get away from me. We came
to the Rue Nicaise. There his strength seemed to begin to fail. I
gathered mine up. He was not more than fifteen paces ahead of me."

"You got hold of him!--your men came up!" cried La Regnie, with
flashing eyes, grasping Desgrais by the arm as if he were the fleeing
murderer himself.

"Fifteen paces ahead of me," said Desgrais, in a hollow voice, and
drawing his breath hard, "this fellow, before my eyes, dodged to one
side, and vanished through the wall."

"Vanished!--through the wall! Are you out of your senses?" La Regnie
cried, stepping three steps backwards, and striking his hands together.

"Call me as great a madman as you please, Monsieur," said Desgrais,
rubbing his forehead like one tortured by evil thoughts. "Call me a
madman, or a silly spirit-seer; but what I have told you is the literal
truth. I stood staring at the wall, while several of my men came up out
of breath, and with them the Marquis de la Fare (who had picked himself
up), with his drawn sword in his hand. We lighted torches, we examined
the wall all over. There was not the trace of a door, a window, any
opening. It is a strong stone wall of a courtyard, belonging to a
house, in which people are living--against whom there is not the
slightest suspicion. I have looked into the whole thing again this
morning in broad daylight. It must be the very devil himself who is at
work befooling us in the matter."

This story got bruited abr