Oh! it was not easy, or it did not appear so. Never had the left wing of Fonval been so jealously closed, even in the days when the monks had been cloistered there.
How had I got in there? In the simplest manner possible.
The Yellow Room is reached by the central hall—where every one could walk if he liked—by a series of three rooms. The hall joins on to the drawing-room, then comes the billiard-room, which opens into the boudoir, and finally this boudoir opens, on the right, into the Yellow Room, which lies back towards the park.
Now, on this day, before profiting by an increased freedom, I tried, one by one, in the lock, keys which I had stolen from other doors here and there. I had no confidence. Suddenly the lock yielded. I opened the door, and I saw in the half light made by the closed shutters, the whole suite of rooms.
I recognized as I went from threshold to threshold the special odor of each—each a little more musty than in the old days—the sort of odors that the Past would exhale, if one could travel in its dust.
I followed on the tips of my toes a track on which many boots had left their mud—now dry. A mouse ran over the drawing-room carpet. On the billiard-table, the ivory balls—red and white—formed an isosceles triangle. Mentally I calculated the stroke, the amount of screw I should put on, and the place where I should hit the second ball, then I found myself in the boudoir itself. The clock, which had stopped, pointed to twelve. I felt myself very receptive. But, hardly had I had the leisure to see the shut door of the Yellow Room, than a sound brought me back hurriedly into the hall.
It was no jesting matter. Lerne worked in the gray buildings, but he knew that I was in the château, and on such occasions, it was his custom to come in suddenly to watch me. It seemed to me prudent to put off the enterprise.
An hour’s liberty was indispensable to me, so I evolved the following stratagem:
The next day I went in my car to Grey-l’Abbaye, and I there bought several articles of toilet, and hid them in a bush in the forest, not far from the Park.
On the day after that, after lunch, Emma heard me say: