They laughed drunkenly and resumed the dance. The man with the older woman was not—greatly to my surprise—Jean Petitjean's companion of the night. The woman was addressing him as Raoul. She seemed trying to quiet him, for he was shouting boisterously as he twirled.
From his post across the room Leroux watched the proceedings with his sneering smile.
Flaring candles were set in sconces of wrought iron around the room, casting a pallid light upon the scene, and so unreal it would have been but for my recognition of the men that I might have expected it to disappear before my eyes.
I crept back from the door and, tracing my journey along the corridor, began to ascend the stairs.
On the first story I perceived a number of rooms, but those whose doors were open were dark and apparently empty. I imagined that all the magnificence of the château was concentrated in that big ballroom.
The corridor on the first story had smaller passages opening out of it—one at each end. I turned to the left. Now the sound of the cataracts, which had never left my ears, became a din. The passages were full of stale tobacco smoke. And advancing I suddenly found myself face to face with Philippe Lacroix.
He was seated at a table in a room writing, and I came right upon the door before I was aware of it. I saw his thin face with the little upturned mustache and the cold sneer about the mouth; and I think I should have shot him if he had looked up. But he neither heard nor saw me, but wrote steadily, puffing at a vile cigar, and I crept back from the door.
Thank God, Jacqueline was not among those brutes below! But I shuddered to think of her environment here.
I turned back and followed the corridor to the right, and came to a little hall toward the rear of the building, as I judged, where the noise of the torrents was less loud, although I now perceived that the château was in a continual mild tremor from the force of their discharge.
The windows in this little hall were broken in several places, and had evidently been in this condition for a long time, for they were covered with strips of paper, through which the wind entered in chilling gusts. Beyond me was an open door, and behind it I saw the dull glow of a stove and felt its heat.