ound on
the outskirts of suburbs.

In front of this dwelling I hesitated. This high barrack of plaster
looked like a den for vagabonds, a hiding-place for suburban brigands.
But he pushed forward a door which had not been locked, and made me go
in before him. He led me forward by the shoulders, through profound
darkness, towards a staircase where I had to feel my way with my hands
and feet, with a well-grounded apprehension of tumbling into some
gaping cellar.

When I had reached the first landing, he said to me: "Go on up! 'Tis
the sixth story."

I searched my pockets, and, finding there a box of vestas, I lighted
the way up the ascent. He followed me, puffing under his pack,
repeating:

"Tis high! 'tis high!"

When we were at the top of the house, he drew forth from one of his
inside pockets a key attached to a thread, and unlocking his door he
made me enter.

It was a little whitewashed room, with a table in the center, six
chairs, and a kitchen-cupboard close to the wall.

"I am going to wake up my wife," he said; "then I am going down to the
cellar to fetch some wine; it doesn't keep here."

He approached one of the two doors which opened out of this apartment,
and exclaimed:

"Bluette! Bluette!" Bluette did not reply. He called out in a louder
tone: "Bluette! Bluette!"

Then knocking at the partition with his fist, he growled: "Will you
wake up in God's name?"

He waited, glued his ear to the key-hole, and muttered, in a calmer
tone: "Pooh! if she is asleep, she must be let sleep! I'll go and get
the wine: wait a couple of minutes for me."

He disappeared. I sat down and made the best of it.

What had I come to this place for? All of a sudden, I gave a start,
for I heard people talking in low tones, and moving about quietly,
almost noiselessly, in the room where the wife slept.

Deuce take it! Had I fallen into some cursed trap? Why had this
woman--this Bluette--not been awakened by the loud knocking of her
husband at the doorway leading into her room; could it have been
merely a signal conveying to accomplices: "There's a mouse in the
trap! I'm going to look out to prevent him escaping. 'Tis for you to
do the rest!"

Certainly, there was more stir than before now in the inner room; I
heard the door opening from within. My heart throbbed. I retreated
towards the further end of the apartment, saying to myself: "I must
make a fight of it!" and, catching hold of the back of a chair with
both ha