The house in the Rue de la Cerisaie seemed asleep amidst the solitude and the silence of the street. Duveyrier was surprised at not seeing any lights in the third-floor windows. Trublot said, with a serious air, that Clarisse had no doubt gone to bed to wait for them; or perhaps, Gueulin added, she was playing a game of bézique in the kitchen with her maid. They knocked. The gas on the staircase was burning with the straight and immovable flame of a lamp in some chapel. Not a sound, not a breath. But, as the four men passed before the room of the doorkeeper, the latter hastily came out.
“Sir, sir, the key!”
Duveyrier stood stock-still on the first step.
“Is madame not there, then?” asked he.
“No, sir. And, wait a moment, you must take a candle with you.”
As he handed him the candlestick, the doorkeeper allowed quite a chuckle of ferocious and vulgar jocosity to pierce through the exaggerated respect depicted on his pallid countenance. Neither of the two young men nor the uncle had said a word. It was in the midst of this silence, and with bent backs, that they ascended the stairs in single file, the interminable noise of their footsteps resounding up each mournful flight. At their head, Duveyrier, who was puzzling himself trying to understand, lifted his feet with the mechanical movement of a somnambulist; and the candle, which he held with a trembling hand, cast their four shadows on the wall, resembling in their strange ascent a procession of broken puppets.
On the third floor, a faintness came over him, and he was quite unable to find the key-hole. Trublot did him the service of opening the door. The key turned in the lock with a sonorous and reverberating noise, as though beneath the vaulted roof of some cathedral.
“Jupiter!” murmured he, “it doesn’t seem as if the place was inhabited.”
“It sounds empty,” said Bachelard.
“A little family vault,” added Gueulin.