When did Aurora sleep? Melusine alone could have known. We heard the birds awakening at the first coming of dawn. The shrill piping of finches and sparrows succeeded the plaintive note of the nightingale. I wonder whether I should hear the birds wake on the morrow.
I realized that the time had come. It was contrary to etiquette, but I said to Aurora:
"Forgive me for leaving you. I'm very tired." There was a tinge of reproach in the look she gave me. I felt she was thinking that Melusine was never tired.
"If she only knew!" I said to myself. And for an instant I was almost tempted to tell her everything.
I went back to my room and left it a few moments later, taking care to go out through the Great Court, for fear lest she might see me from her window.
It was not yet five o'clock when I reached the La Meilleraie bridge. That hour's respite seemed to me an eternity of bliss. Never had earth seemed so fair and life so dear as in those moments which I thought might very well be my last.
I knew that Hagen was one of the finest swordsmen in the garrison. He was also a crack pistol shot, while I—well, my education had been confined to firing off two, perhaps three, dozen cartridges with a revolver during my training periods as an officer of the reserve.
Leaning on the parapet I watched the Melna dashing over the boulders far below me. Little silvery trout darted up out of the foaming water, and reminded me of my trout-fishing days, ten years before, in the Ossau stream, between Laruns and Pont de Béon.
Where was this river going? To join the Aller, which meets the Weser, which flows into the North Sea, which joins the Channel, which is an arm of the Atlantic, which receives the waters of the Adour, into which the river of Pan, swollen by the Ossau stream, runs close by the blue hamlet of Peyrehorade. Little German trout, little French trout. Foolish, childish thoughts which carry the mind of a man facing death back through the course of his life, and bridge the gulf between distant epochs.
"I am sorry to have kept you waiting, Herr Professor. But it's not yet quite six o'clock."