is back, the street was deserted.

Everywhere shutters had been put up, blinds closed, curtains drawn.
Not a shred of smoke curled from the chimneys of these deserted
houses; the heavy gables cast sinister shadows over closed doors and
gates barred and locked, and it made me think of an unseaworthy ship,
prepared for a storm, so bare and battened down was this long, dreary
commune, lying there in the August sun.

Beside the window, close to my face, was a small, square loop-hole,
doubtless once used for arquebus fire. It tired me to lean on the
window, so I contented myself with lying back and turning my head, and
I could see quite as well through the loop-hole as from the window.

Lying there, watching the slow shadows crawling out over the sidewalk,
I had been for some minutes thinking of my friend Mr. Buckhurst, when
I heard the young Countess stirring in the room behind me.

"You are not going to be a cripple?" she said, as I turned my head.

"Oh no, indeed!" said I.

"Nor die?" she added, seriously.

"How could a man die with an angel straight from heaven to guard him!
Pardon, I am only grateful, not impertinent." I looked at her humbly,
and she looked at me without the slightest expression. Oh, it was all
very well for the Countess de Vassart to tuck up her skirts and rake
hay, and live with a lot of half-crazy apostles, and throw her fortune
to the proletariat and her reputation to the dogs. She could do it;
she was Eline Cyprienne de Trecourt, Countess de Vassart; and if her
relatives didn't like her views, that was their affair; and if the
Faubourg Saint-Germain emitted moans, that concerned the noble
faubourg and not James Scarlett, a policeman attached to a division of
paid mercenaries.

Oh yes, it was all very well for the Countess de Vassart to play at
democracy with her unbalanced friends, but it was also well for
Americans to remember that she was French, and that this was France,
and that in France a countess was a countess until she was buried in
the family vault, whether she had chosen to live as a countess or as
Doll Dairymaid.

The young girl looked at me curiously, studying me with those
exquisite gray eyes of hers. Pensive, distraite, she sat there, the
delicate contour of her head outlined against the sunny window, which
quivered with the slow boom! boom! of the cannonade.

"Are you English, Monsieur Scarlett?" she asked, quietly.

"American, madame."

"And yet you take service unde