“Your conduct was quite proper, I believe, Sir.”
I groped about in my mind for an appropriate phrase of thanks; but before I hit upon one, mine host, pointing a finger at one of the invisible doors in the paneling, remarked, still addressing his son:
“It is evident that monsieur should be allowed to retire at once. Be so good as to show him to his room, Sir! You will need a light.”
I bowed in acknowledgement, without speaking. The son was already in motion, leading the way with the same spotlight playing on the room about us. Our first steps on the tiled floor raised a curious echo in that all but unfurnished chamber, the four walls of which threw each sound back upon us and seemed to prolong it with a briefly sustained tremor. The spotlight chanced to cast a round, luminous circle upon one of the frescos. As far as my hasty glimpse of it enabled me to judge, it was a mythological subject in faded color and not over-stressed design—a birth of Aphrodite from the sea, perhaps.
My guide drew back, in succession, three long thick bolts, longer and thicker than any bolts I could remember ever having seen. They secured the door to which the elder of the two men had pointed. A closer view of the wall revealed to me that beside this door there was another, similarly disguised in the paneling and fastened in the same way. Taken together, they might have been mistaken for the two wings of one folding door, joining very badly, for that matter, despite their rugged hinges; for a gap of a full inch was visible under each of the presumed wings, leaving free play to draughts.
These observations had scarcely flashed through my mind, when the old man, the father, that is, who had been standing in the center of the reception hall with his eyes glued upon me, advanced suddenly in my direction, and his steps, light as they were, echoed about the room as ours had done. I stopped and looked at him. With a gesture, and speaking to me directly for the first time, he said:
“Monsieur, I forgot to remind you that in our house, and not far indeed from the quarters you will occupy, we have a case of sickness. Might I request you, therefore, kindly to make as little noise as possible?”
This was the second time I had been urged not to talk; but the pretext had been different on each occasion....
And then something happened ... a very inconsiderable thing, which gave me a distinct shiver of excitement. It was not so much myself who trembled, but rather that submerged, unconscious being we each have within us which watches while we slumber and ever has a memory and a consciousness quite apart from our waking selves....
From under the other door—the door which had not been opened, namely—a sudden draught of warm air came. It was cold, noticeably cold, in the reception hall; but behind the closed door was a room which they kept much better heated. Now that draught of warm air!... As it passed through my nostrils, I became gradually aware of its fragrance. It was sweet with a perfume which my conscious self did not recognize, but which my submerged ego at once remembered—my submerged ego only, indeed. That is why I had crossed the threshold of the open door before I really understood....