ire, the beautiful slopes of Saint-Cyr,
the gloomy marvels of Plessis, where lights were gleaming in the deep
recesses of a few windows. Far in the distance lay the beautiful meadows
of Touraine and the silvery stream of her river. Every point of this
lovely nature had, at that moment, a mysterious grace; the windows, the
waters, the roofs of the houses shone like diamonds in the trembling
light of the moon. The soul of the young seigneur could not repress a
sad and tender emotion.

"Suppose it is my last farewell!" he said to himself.

He stood there, feeling already the terrible emotions his adventure
offered him, and yielding to the fears of a prisoner who, nevertheless,
retains some glimmer of hope. His mistress illumined each difficulty. To
him she was no longer a woman, but a supernatural being seen through
the incense of his desires. A feeble cry, which he fancied came from the
hotel de Poitiers, restored him to himself and to a sense of his true
situation. Throwing himself on his pallet to reflect on his course, he
heard a slight movement which echoed faintly from the spiral staircase.
He listened attentively, and the whispered words, "He has gone to bed,"
said by the old woman, reached his ear. By an accident unknown probably
to the architect, the slightest noise on the staircase sounded in the
room of the apprentices, so that Philippe did not lose a single movement
of the miser and his sister who were watching him. He undressed, lay
down, pretended to sleep, and employed the time during which the pair
remained on the staircase, in seeking means to get from his prison to
the hotel de Poitiers.

About ten o'clock Cornelius and his sister, convinced that their new
inmate was sleeping, retired to their rooms. The young man studied
carefully the sounds they made in doing so, and thought he could
recognize the position of their apartments; they must, he believed,
occupy the whole second floor. Like all the houses of that period, this
floor was next below the roof, from which its windows projected, adorned
with spandrel tops that were richly sculptured. The roof itself was
edged with a sort of balustrade, concealing the gutters for the rain
water which gargoyles in the form of crocodile's heads discharged
into the street. The young seigneur, after studying this topography as
carefully as a cat, believed he could make his way from the tower to the
roof, and thence to Madame de Vallier's by the gutters and the help o