the sky also.
At the extremity of the place I perceived four obscure objects that
looked liked cannon levelled ready for firing.

A great crowd of ragged men and children rushed by me with gestures of
terror.

"Save us!" cried one of them. "The grape shot is coming!"

"Where are we?" I asked. "What is this place?"'

"What! do you not belong to Paris?" responded the man. "This is the
Palais-Royal."

I gazed about me and, in effect, recognised in this frightful,
devastated square in ruins a sort of spectre of the Palais-Royal.

The fleeing men had vanished, I knew not whither.

I also would have fled. I could not. In the twilight I saw a light
moving about the cannon.

The square was deserted. I could hear cries of: "Run! they are going to
shoot!" but I could not see those who uttered them.

A woman passed by. She was in tatters and carried a child on her back.
She did not run. She walked slowly. She was young, cold, pale, terrible.

As she passed me she said: "It is hard lines! Bread is at thirty-four
sous, and even at that the cheating bakers do not give full weight."

I saw the light at the end of the square flare up and heard the roar of
the cannon. I awoke.

Somebody had just slammed the front door.

IV. THE PANEL WITH THE COAT OF ARMS.

The panel which was opposite the bed had been so blackened by time and
effaced by dust that at first he could distinguish only confused lines
and undecipherable contours; but the while he was thinking of other
things his eyes continually wandered back to it with that mysterious and
mechanical persistence which the gaze sometimes has. Singular details
began to detach themselves from the confused and obscure whole. His
curiosity was roused. When the attention becomes fixed it is like a
light; and the tapestry growing gradually less cloudy finally appeared
to him in its entirety, and stood out distinctly against the sombre
wall, as though vaguely illumined.

It was only a panel with a coat of arms upon it, the blazon, no doubt,
of former owners of the chateau; but this blazon was a strange one.

The escutcheon was at the foot of the panel, and it was not this
that first attracted attention. It was of the bizarre shape of German
escutcheons of the fifteenth century. It was perpendicular and rested,
although rounded at the base, upon a worn, moss covered stone. Of the
two upper angles, one bent to the left and curled back upon itself like
the turned down cor