red information."

Thereupon Don Vigilio bowed and entered his room; whilst Pierre,
surprised to find his door open, saw Victorine come out with her calm
active air.

"Ah! Monsieur l'Abbe, I wanted to make sure that you had everything you
were likely to want. There are candles, water, sugar, and matches. And
what do you take in the morning, please? Coffee? No, a cup of milk with a
roll. Very good; at eight o'clock, eh? And now rest and sleep well. I was
awfully afraid of ghosts during the first nights I spent in this old
palace! But I never saw a trace of one. The fact is, when people are
dead, they are too well pleased, and don't want to break their rest!"

Then off she went, and Pierre at last found himself alone, glad to be
able to shake off the strain imposed on him, to free himself from the
discomfort which he had felt in that reception-room, among those people
who in his mind still mingled and vanished like shadows in the sleepy
glow of the lamps. Ghosts, thought he, are the old dead ones of long ago
whose distressed spirits return to love and suffer in the breasts of the
living of to-day. And, despite his long afternoon rest, he had never felt
so weary, so desirous of slumber, confused and foggy as was his mind,
full of the fear that he had hitherto not understood things aright. When
he began to undress, his astonishment at being in that room returned to
him with such intensity that he almost fancied himself another person.
What did all those people think of his book? Why had he been brought to
this cold dwelling whose hostility he could divine? Was it for the
purpose of helping him or conquering him? And again in the yellow
glimmer, the dismal sunset of the drawing-room, he perceived Donna
Serafina and Advocate Morano on either side of the chimney-piece, whilst
behind the calm yet passionate visage of Benedetta appeared the smiling
face of Monsignor Nani, with cunning eyes and lips bespeaking indomitable
energy.

He went to bed, but soon got up again, stifling, feeling such a need of
fresh, free air that he opened the window wide in order to lean out. But
the night was black as ink, the darkness had submerged the horizon. A
mist must have hidden the stars in the firmament; the vault above seemed
opaque and heavy like lead; and yonder in front the houses of the
Trastevere had long since been asleep. Not one of all their windows
glittered; there was but a single gaslight shining, all alone and far
away, like a