ich were none
the less painful because the parole I had given debarred me from any
attempt to escape.

Sleep and habit enabled me, nevertheless, to pass the night in comfort.
Very early in the morning a great firing of guns, which made itself
heard even in my quarters, led me to suppose that Paris had surrendered;
but the servant who brought me my breakfast; declined in a surly fashion
to give me any information. In the end, I spent the whole day alone, my
thoughts divided between my mistress and my own prospects, which seemed
to grow more and more gloomy as the hours succeeded one another. No one
came near me, no step broke the silence of the house; and for a while
I thought my guardians had forgotten even that I needed food. This
omission, it is true, was made good about sunset, but still M. la
Varenne did not appear, the servant seemed to be dumb, and I heard no
sounds in the house.

I had finished my meal an hour or more, and the room was growing dark,
when the silence was at last broken by quick steps passing along the
entrance. They paused, and seemed to hesitate at the foot of the stairs,
but the next moment they came on again, and stopped at my door. I rose
from my seat on hearing the key turned in the lock, and my astonishment
may be conceived when I saw no other than M. de Turenne enter, and close
the door behind him.

He saluted me in a haughty manner as he advanced to the table, raising
his cap for an instant and then replacing it. This done he stood looking
at me, and I at him, in a silence which on my side was the result of
pure astonishment; on his, of contempt and a kind of wonder. The evening
light, which was fast failing, lent a sombre whiteness to his face,
causing it to stand out from the shadows behind him in a way which was
not without its influence on me.

'Well!' he said at, last, speaking slowly and with unimaginable
insolence, 'I am here to look at you!'

I felt my anger rise, and gave him back look for look. 'At your will,' I
said, shrugging my shoulders.

'And to solve a question,' he continued in the same tone. 'To learn
whether the man who was mad enough to insult and defy me was the old
penniless dullard some called him, or the dare-devil others painted
him.'

'You are satisfied now?' I said.

He eyed me for a moment closely; then with sudden heat he cried, 'Curse
me if I am! Nor whether I have to do with a man very deep or very
shallow, a fool or a knave!'

'You may say what