"Qui ne craint pas la mort craint donc la vie."
As I sat in my study, the sounds of the house gradually ceased, and the quiet of night settled down between its ancient walls. It seemed to me at times that the Vicomte was moving in his own room. I knew, however, that the passage between us was locked on both sides. My old patron had said nothing to me on the subject, but I had found the door bolted and the key removed. I never was the man to intrude upon another's privacy, and respected the Vicomte's somewhat incomprehensible humour at this time.
I scarcely knew at what hour I at last went to bed; but the oil in my lamp was nearly exhausted and the candles had burnt low. Taking up one of these, I went to my bedroom, pausing at the head of the black staircase to listen as one instinctively does in a great silence. The household was asleep. A faint patter broke the stillness; Lucille's dog—a small white shadow in the gloom—came towards me from her bedroom, outside of which he slept. He looked up at me with a restrained jerk of the tail, for we were always friends, and his expression said:
"Anything wrong?"
He glanced back over his shoulder to Lucille's door, as if to intimate that his own charge was, at all events, safe; then he passed me, and pressed his inquiring nose to the threshold of the Vicomte's study door. He was a singular little dog, with a deep sense of responsibility, which he only laid aside in Lucille's presence. In which he resembled his betters. Men are usually at ease of mind in the presence of one woman only. At night I often heard him blowing the dust from his nostrils at the threshold of my door, whither he came to satisfy himself that I was in my room and all well in the house before he sought his own mat.
When I went softly to my bedroom he was still sniffing at the study door.
I must have slept a couple of hours only when my door handle was quietly turned, and, being a light sleeper, I became aware of a presence in the room before a touch was laid upon my shoulder. It was Madame de Clericy.
"Where is my husband?" she asked, and added: "I thought he was sitting up with you."
"No; I have been alone all the evening," answered I, with a quick feeling of uneasiness.
"I do not think that he is in the house at all," said Madame, moving towards the door. "Will you get up and dress? You will find me in the morning-room."