And he called him again, “Cham! Cham!”
The dog got upon his feet, turned toward us, listening to the voice that called him. He took a few steps, wagged his tail, and stretched himself out in the sun again.
“He doesn’t remember me,” said Rouletabille sadly.
He drew me into a little street which had a steep down grade, and was paved with sharp pebbles. As we went down the hill he took my hand and I could feel the fever in his. We stopped again in front of a tiny temple of the Jesuit style, which raised in front of us its porch, ornamented with semicircles of stone, the “reversed consoles” which are the characteristic features of an architecture which contributed nothing to the glory of the Seventeenth Century. After having pushed open a little low door, Rouletabille bade me enter, and we found ourselves inside a beautiful mortuary chapel, upon the stone floor of which were kneeling, beside their empty tombs, magnificent marble statues of Catherine of Cleves and Guise le Balafre.
“The college chapel,” whispered Rouletabille.
There was no person in the chapel. We crossed the room hastily. On the left wall, Rouletabille tapped very gently a kind of drum, which gave out a queer, muffled sound.
“We are in luck!” he said. “Everything is going well. We are inside the college and the concierge has not seen me. He would surely have remembered me.”
“What harm would that have done?”
Just at that moment a man with bare head and a bunch of keys at his side passed through the room and Rouletabille drew me into the shadow.
“It is Pere Simon. Ah, how old he has grown! He is almost bald. Listen: this is the hour when he goes to superintend the study hour of the younger boys. Everyone is in the class room at this time. Oh, we are very lucky! There is only Mere Simon in the lodge—that is, if she is not dead. At any rate, she can’t see us from here. But wait—here is Pere Simon back again!”