"Indeed, I cannot tell you, mon ami," said the abbé, laying down his book with a look of despair.
The morning after I was again in the corridor a full half hour before my usual time, but the window wore its usual air. The next day, again I was an hour beforehand, and the abbé had not put off his priest robe, in which he goes to morning mass; still there was no handkerchief at the little window—no wavy mesh of hair—no taper arm—no shadowy form moving in the dim chamber.
I had arranged to leave for the south in a few days, and was more than ever anxious for some explication of the mystery. A single further mode only occurred to me; I would go to the concierge next door, and under pretence of looking for rooms, would have him conduct me through his hotel.
It had dismal corridors, and steeper stairways than even the abbé's. I was careless about the second and the third floors; and it was not till we had mounted a half dozen crazy pair of stairs, that I began to scrutinize narrowly the doors, and sometimes to ask if this or that chamber was occupied. I made my way always to the windows of the rooms shown me, in hope of seeing the little court I knew so well, and the abbé's half-open corridor, and yet in half fear, that I might, after all, be looking from the very window about which hung so perplexing mystery.
It was long before I caught sight of my old point of observation in the neighboring corridor. The room was small, and was covered with singular ancient hangings, with a concealed door, which the concierge opened into a charming little cabinet. How many more concealed doors there might have been I do not know. I put my head out the window, and looked down in search of the strange casement; it was not below. Then I looked to one side—there was the long window with a striped curtain. I looked to the other side—another long window. I looked up—there at length it was, over my left shoulder. I could see plainly the yellow placard, and heard it flapping the casement.
I asked the concierge if he had no rooms above.
"Oui, monsieur—a single one; but it is too high for monsieur."
"Let me see," said I—and we mounted a miserably dim staircase. There were three doors; the concierge opened the nearest to the landing.
"La voici, monsieur." It was a sad little affair, and looked out by just such a loop-hole as was the object of my curiosity, upon a court I did not know.
"It will never do," said I, as I came out of the room. "But what is here?" continued I, brushing up to the next door.