Here, there, everywhere, lights shone from thousands of windows. How different were the scenes behind those windows! There were windows of homes, of offices, of hospitals and jails. Each hid a story of life.
So absorbed was the little French girl in all these things as she sat there in the shadow of a chimney, she did not note that a trap door a hundred feet away had lifted silently, allowed a dark figure to pass, then as silently closed. Had she noted this she must surely have thought the person some robber escaping with his booty. She would, beyond doubt, have fled to her own trap door and vanished.
Since she did not see the intruder upon her reveries, she continued to drink in the crisp fresh air of night and to sit musing over the strangeness of life.
Some moments later she was startled by one long-drawn musical note, it seemed to have come from a violin, and that not far away. Before she could cry out or flee, there came to her startled ears, played exquisitely on a violin, the melodious notes of O Sole Mio.
To her vexation and terror, at that moment the moon passed behind a cloud and all the roof was dark. Still the music did not cease.
Awed by the strangeness of it all, captivated by that marvelous music played in a place so strange, Jeanne sat as one entranced until the last note had died away.
“There, my pretty ones!” said a voice with startling distinctness, “how do you like that? Not so bad, eh?”
There was something of a reply. It was, however, too indistinct to be understood.
“Could anything be stranger?” Jeanne asked herself. She knew that the voice was that of a young man, or perhaps a boy. She felt that perhaps she should proceed to vanish.
“But how can I?” she whispered, “and leave all this mystery unsolved?”