out
of his wits." And the devil answered: "Nonsense! do him good. He
oughtn't to be such a schoolgirl."

Anyway, the five pounds might as well be won to-night as any other
night. He would take a great coat, sleep sound in the place of horrors,
and the people who opened it in the morning to sweep and dust would bear
witness that he had passed the night there. He thought he might trust to
the French love of a sporting wager to keep him from any bother with the
authorities.

So he went in among the crowd, and looked about among the wax-works for
a place to hide in. He was not in the least afraid of these lifeless
images. He had always been able to control his nervous tremors. He was
not even afraid of being frightened, which, by the way, is the worst
fear of all. As one looks at the room of the poor little Dauphin, one
sees a door to the left. It opens out of the room on to blackness. There
were few people in the gallery. Vincent watched, and in a moment when he
was alone he stepped over the barrier and through this door. A narrow
passage ran round behind the wall of the room. Here he hid, and when the
gallery was deserted he looked out across the body of little Capet to
the gaolers at the window. There was a soldier at the window, too.
Vincent amused himself with the fancy that this soldier might walk round
the passage at the back of the room and tap him on the shoulder in the
darkness. Only the head and shoulders of the soldier and the gaoler
showed, so, of course, they could not walk, even if they were something
that was not wax-work.

Presently he himself went along the passage and round to the window
where they were. He found that they had legs. They were full-sized
figures dressed completely in the costume of the period.

"Thorough the beggars are, even the parts that don't show--artists, upon
my word," said Vincent, and went back to his doorway, thinking of the
hidden carving behind the capitols of Gothic cathedrals.

But the idea of the soldier who might come behind him in the dark stuck
in his mind. Though still a few visitors strolled through the gallery,
the closing hour was near. He supposed it would be quite dark then. And
now he had allowed himself to be amused by the thought of something that
should creep up behind him in the dark, he might possibly be nervous in
that passage round which, if wax-works could move, the soldier might
have come.

"By Jove!" he said, "one might easily frighten oneself by j