He made his way to the back of the villa, and carefully examined the walls. His eyes were accustomed to darkness, and he could see pretty clearly; it was a long time before he discovered a means of ingress, afforded by an old elm which grew within a few yards of the wall, and the far-spreading branches of which stretched over the grounds.
He climbed the tree, and crept like a cat along the stoutest branch he could find. It bent beneath his weight as he hung suspended from it. It was a fall of twenty feet, but he risked it. He unloosed his hands, and dropped to the earth. He was shaken, but not bruised. His purpose, thus far, was accomplished. He was within the grounds of the villa.
All was quiet. When he had recovered from the shock of the fall, he stepped warily towards the house. Now and then he was startled and alarmed at the shadows of the trees which moved athwart his path, but he mastered these terrors, and crept on and on till he heard the soft sound of a clock striking the hour.
He paused, as the Advocate had done, and counted the strokes. Midnight. When the sound had quite died away, he stepped forward, and saw the lights in the study windows.
Was anybody there? He guessed shrewdly enough that if the room was occupied it would be by no other person than the Advocate. Well, it was the Advocate he came to see; he had no design of robbery in his mind.
He stealthily approached a window, and blessed his good fortune to find that it was partly open. He peered into the study; it was empty. He climbed the sill, and dropped safely into the room.
What a grand apartment! What costly pictures and vases, what an array of books and papers! Beautiful objects met his eyes whichever way he turned. There was the Advocate's chair, there the table at which he wrote. The Advocate had left the room for a while--this was Gautran's correct surmise--and intended to return. The lamps fully turned up were proof of this. He looked at the papers on the table. Could he have read, he would have seen that many of them bore his own name. On a massive sideboard there were bottles filled with liquor, and glasses. He drank three or four glasses rapidly, and then, coiling himself up in a corner of the room, in a few moments was fast asleep.
CHAPTER VI
[PIERRE LAMONT READS LOVE-VERSES TO FRITZ THE FOOL]
The bedroom allotted to Pierre Lamont by Mother Denise was situated on the first floor, and adjoined the apartments prepared for Christian Almer. As he was unable to walk a step it was necessary that the old lawyer should be carried upstairs. His body-servant, expressly engaged to wheel him about and attend to his wants, was ready to perform his duties, but into Pierre Lamont's head had entered the whim that he would be assisted to his room by no person but Fritz the Fool. The servant was sent in search of Fritz, who could not easily be found. It was quite half an hour before the fool made his appearance, and by that time all the guests, with the exception of Pierre Lamont, had left the House of White Shadows.