o speak to Mademoiselle in the middle of the night? Don't
you know that she has been gone to bed a long time, and that for no
price would I wake her up out of her first sound sleep, which at her
time of life she has so much need of?" The person standing below said,
"But I know that your mistress has only just laid aside her new romance
_Clelie_, at which she labours so unremittingly; and she is now writing
certain verses which she intends to read to the Marchioness de
Maintenon[2] to-morrow. I implore you, Madame Martiniere, have pity and
open me the door. I tell you the matter involves the saving of an
unfortunate man from ruin,--that the honour, freedom, nay, that the
life of a man is dependent upon this moment, and I _must_ speak to
Mademoiselle. Recollect how your mistress's anger would rest upon you
for ever, if she learned that you had had the hard-heartedness to turn
an unfortunate man away from her door when he came to supplicate her
assistance." "But why do you come to appeal to my mistress's compassion
at this unusual hour? Come again early in the morning," said La
Martiniere. The person below replied, "Does Destiny, then, heed times
and hours when it strikes, like the fatal flash, fraught with
destruction? When there is but a single moment longer in which rescue
is still possible, ought assistance to be delayed? Open me the door;
you need have nothing to fear from a poor defenceless wretch, who is
deserted of all the world, pursued and distressed by an awful fate,
when he comes to beseech Mademoiselle to save him from threatening
danger?" La Martiniere heard the man below moaning and sobbing with
anguish as he said these words, and at the same time the voice was the
voice of a young man, gentle, and gifted with the power of appealing
straight to the heart She was greatly touched; without much further
deliberation she fetched the keys.

But hardly had she got the door opened when the figure enveloped in the
mantle burst tumultuously in, and striding past Martiniere into the
passage, cried wildly, "Lead me to your mistress!" In terror Martiniere
lifted up the candle, and its light fell upon a young man's face,
deathly pale and fearfully agitated. Martiniere almost dropped on the
floor with fright, for the man now threw open his mantle and showed the
bright hilt of a stiletto sticking out of the bosom of his doublet. His
eyes flashed fire as he fixed them upon her, crying still more wildly
than before, "Lead me