and scrutinise. I
returned to my mother's lodging again and again, always fruitlessly. I
rushed to the stables and rushed away again, or stood and listened
in the dark, empty stalls, wondering what had happened, and torturing
myself with suggestions of this or that. And everywhere, not only at
the North-gate, where I interrogated the porters and found that no party
resembling that which I sought had passed out, but on the PARVIS of the
Cathedral, where a guard was drawn up, and in the common streets, where
I burst in on one group and another with my queries, I ran the risk of
suspicion and arrest, and all that might follow thereon.

It was strange indeed that I escaped arrest. The wound in my chin still
bled at intervals, staining my doublet; and as I was without my cloak,
which I had left in the house in the Rue Valois, I had nothing to cover
my disordered dress. I was keenly, fiercely anxious. Stray passers
meeting me in the glare of a torch, or seeing me hurry by the great
braziers which burned where four streets met, looked askance at me and
gave me the wall; while men in authority cried to me to stay and answer
their questions. I ran from the one and the other with the same savage
impatience, disregarding everything in the feverish anxiety which
spurred me on and impelled me to a hundred imprudences, such as at my
age I should have blushed to commit. Much of this feeling was due, no
doubt, to the glimpse I had had of mademoiselle, and the fiery words she
had spoken; more, I fancy, to chagrin and anger at the manner in which
the cup of success had been dashed at the last moment from my lips.

For four hours I wandered through the streets, now hot with purpose,
now seeking aimlessly. It was ten o'clock when at length I gave up the
search, and, worn out both in body and mind, climbed the stairs at my
mother's lodgings and entered her room. An old woman sat by the fire,
crooning softly to herself, while she stirred something in a black pot.
My mother lay in the same heavy, deep sleep in which I had left her. I
sat down opposite the nurse (who cried out at my appearance) and asked
her dully for some food. When I had eaten it, sitting in a kind of
stupor the while, the result partly of my late exertions, and partly of
the silence which prevailed round me, I bade the woman call me if any
change took place; and then going heavily across to the garret Simon
had occupied, I lay down on his pallet, and fell into a sound, dre