"No," I said, groaning; "but I banged my head. She did not say it was a trap-door."
We ascended the stairs a second time—this time most cautiously on our hands and knees. Above us, at the end, we could feel, with upleaping of spirit, a wooden ceiling.
"Ah, I have the cord!" he exclaimed.
The next instant we heard a faint but most comforting tinkle somewhere above us. Before we had time to wonder whether any marked it but us, we heard steps overhead, and a noise as of a chest being pulled about, and then the trap lifted. We climbed out into a silk-mercer's shop.
"Faith, my man," said M. Étienne to the little bourgeois who had opened to us, "I am glad to see you appear so promptly."
He looked at us, somewhat troubled or alarmed.
"You must have met—" he suggested with hesitancy.
"Yes," said M. Étienne; "but he did not object. We are, of course, of the initiated."
"Of course, of course," the little fellow assented, with a funny assumption of knowing all about it. "Not every one has the secret of the passage. Well, I can call myself a lucky man. 'Tis mighty few mercers have a duke in their shop as often as I."
We looked curiously about us. The shop was low and dim, with piles of stuff in rolls on the shelves, and other stuffs lying loose on the counter before us, as if the man had just been measuring them—gorgeous brocades and satins. Above us, a bell on the rafter still quivered.