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In a Glaj; £arkly.
BY
HERIDAN LE FANU,
o R o F “ U N C L E S I L A s,” & c.
IN THREE VOLUMES.
VOL. II.
L ON DO N :
R. BENTLEY & SON, NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
1872.
The right of translation is reserved.





22.2
| < 2
• * ~.
- " - )
In a Glajs Qarkly,
T H E ROOM
IN
THE DRAGON VOLANT.
* * * * * * (* **,
. . . . . 'G f
VOL., ii. B





P R O L O G U E.
---------
HE curious case which I am about to
place before you, is referred to, very
pointedly, and more than once, in the ex-
traordinary Essay upon the drugs of the
Dark and the Middle Ages, from the pen
of Doctor Hesselius.
This Essay he entitles “Mortis Imago,”
and he, therein, discusses the Vinum letiferum,
the Beatifica, the Somnus Angelorum, the
Hypnus Sagarum, the Aqua Thessalliae, and
about twenty other infusions and distilla-
d


ii IN A GLASS DARKLY.
tions, well known to the sages of eight
hundred years ago, and two of which are
still, he alleges, known to the fraternity of
thieves, and, among them, as police-office
inquiries sometimes disclose to this day, in
practical use.
The Essay, Mortis Imago, will occupy as
nearly as I can, at present, calculate, two
volumes, the ninth and tenth, of the col-
lected papers of Doctor Martin Hesselius.
This Essay, I may remark, in conclusion,
is very curiously enriched by citations, in
great abundance, from mediaeval verse and
prose romance, some of the most valuable
of which, strange to say, are Egyptian.
I have selected this particular statement
from among many cases equally striking,
but hardly, I think, so effective as mere
narratives, in this irregular form of publi-
cation, it is simply as a story that I present
1t.


CHAPTER I.
O N T H E R O A. D.
N the eventful year, 1815, I was exactly
three-and-twenty, and had just suc-
ceeded to a very large sum in consols, and
other securities. The first fall of Napoleon
had thrown the continent open to English
excursionists, anxious, let us suppose, to
improve their minds by foreign travel; and
I—the slight check of the ‘hundred days’
removed, by the genius of Wellington, on
the field of Waterloo—was now added to the
philosophic throng.


4. IN A GLASS DARKLY.
I was posting up to Paris from Bruxelles,
following, I presume, the route that the allied
army had pursued but a few weeks before—
more carriages than you could believe were
pursuing the same line. You could not look
back or forward, without seeing into far per-
spective the clouds of dust which marked the
line of the long series of vehicles. We were,
perpetually, passing relays of return-horses,
on their way, jaded and dusty, to the inns
from which they had been taken. They were
arduous times for those patient public ser–
vants. The whole world seemed posting up
to Paris.
I ought to have noted it more particularly,
but my head was so full of Paris and the future,
that I passed the intervening scenery with little
patience and less attention; I think, however,
that it was about four miles to the frontier
side of a rather picturesque little town, the
name of which, as of many more important


6 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
time, stuck his head out of the window. An
invalid he seemed, for although the day was
hot, he wore a black muffler which came up
to his ears and nose, quite covering the lower
part of his face, an arrangement which he
disturbed by pulling it down for a moment,
and poured forth a torrent of French thanks,
as he uncovered his black wig, and gesti-
culated with grateful animation. -
One of my very few accomplishments
besides boxing, which was cultivated by all
Englishmen at that time, was French; and
I replied, I hope and believe, grammatically.
Many bows being exchanged, the old
gentleman's head went in again, and the
demure, pretty little bonnet once more ap-
peared.
The lady must have heard me speak to
my servant, for she framed her little speech
in such pretty, broken English, and in a
voice so sweet, that I more than ever cursed


THE DRAGON VoILANT. 7
the black veil that baulked my romantic
curiosity.
The arms that were emblazoned on the
panel were peculiar; I remember especially,
one device, it was the figure of a stork,
painted in carmine, upon what the heralds
call a ‘field or. The bird was standing upon
one leg, and in the other claw held a stone.
This is, I believe, the emblem of vigilance.
Its oddity struck me, and remained impressed
upon my memory. There were supporters
besides, but I forget what they were.
The courtly manners of these people, the
style of their servants, the elegance of their
travelling carriage, and the supporters to
their arms, satisfied me that they were
noble. -
The lady, you may be sure, was not the
less interesting on that account. What a
fascination a title exercises upon the imagina-
tion | I do not mean on that of snobs or


8 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
*
moral flunkies. Superiority of rank is a
powerful and genuine influence in love. The
idea of superior refinement is associated with
it. The careless notice of the squire tells
more upon the heart of the pretty milkmaid,
than years of honest Dobbin's manly devo-
tion, and so on and up. It is an unjust
world !
But in this case there was something more.
I was conscious of being good-looking. I
really believe I was; and there could be no
mistake about my being nearly six feet high.
Why need this lady have thanked me? Had
not her husband, for such I assumed him
to be, thanked me quite enough, and for
both? I was instinctively aware that the
lady was looking on me with no unwilling
eyes; and, through her veil, I felt the power
of her gaze.
She was now rolling away, with a train of
dust behind her wheels, in the golden sun-


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 9
*
light, and a wise young gentleman followed
her with ardent eyes, and sighed profoundly
as the distance increased.
I told the postillions on no account to pass
the carriage, but to keep it steadily in view,
and to pull up at whatever posting-house it
should stop at. We were soon in the little
town, and the carriage we followed drew up
at the Belle Etoile, a comfortable old inn.
They got out of the carriage and entered the
house.
At a leisurely pace we followed. I got
down, and mounted the steps listlessly, like
a man quite apathetic and careless.
Audacious as I was, I did not care to
inquire in what room I should find them.
I peeped into the apartment to my right, and
then into that on my left. My people were
not there.
I ascended the stairs. A drawing-room
door stood open. I entered with the most


IO IN A GLASS DARKLY.
innocent air in the world. It was a spacious
room, and, beside myself, contained but one
living figure—a very pretty and lady-like
one. There was the very bonnet with which
I had fallen in love. The lady stood with
her back toward me. I could not tell whether
the envious veil was raised; she was reading
a letter.
I stood for a minute in fixed attention,
gazing upon her, in the vague hope that she
might turn about, and give me an oppor-
tunity of seeing her features. She did not;
but with a step or two she placed herself
before a little cabriole-table, which stood
against the wall, from which rose a tall
mirror, in a tarnished frame. *
I might, indeed, have mistaken it for
a picture; for it now reflected a half-
length portrait of a singularly beautiful
woman.
She was looking down upon a letter which


THE DRAGON VOLANT. I I
she held in her slender fingers, and in which
she seemed absorbed.
The face was oval, melancholy, sweet. It
had in it, nevertheless, a faint and undefinably
sensual quality also. Nothing could exceed
the delicacy of its features, or the brilliancy
of its tints. The eyes, indeed, were lowered,
so that I could not see their colour; nothing
but their long lashes, and delicate eyebrows.
She continued reading. She must have been
deeply interested; I never saw a living form
so motionless—I gazed on a tinted statue.
Being at that time blessed with long and
keen vision, I saw this beautiful face with
perfect distinctness. I saw even the blue
veins that traced their wanderings on the
whiteness of her full throat.
I ought to have retreated as noiselessly as
I came in, before my presence was detected.
But I was too much interested to move from
the spot, for a few moments longer; and


CHAPTER II.
THE IN N-YARD OF THE BELLE ETOILE.
HE face was, indeed, one to fall in love
with at first sight. Those sentiments
that take such sudden possession of young
men were now dominating my curiosity.
My audacity faltered before her; and I felt
that my presence in this room was probably
an impertinence. This point she quickly
settled, for the same very sweet voice I had
heard before, now said coldly, and this time
in French, “Monsieur cannot be aware that
this apartment is not public.”


14. IN A GLASS DARKLY.
I bowed very low, faltered some apologies,
and backed to the door.
I suppose I looked penitent and embar-
rassed. I certainly felt so; for the lady
said, by way it seemed of softening matters,
“I am happy, however, to have an oppor-
tunity of again thanking Monsieur for the
assistance, so prompt and effectual, which he
had the goodness to render us to-day.”
It was more the altered tone in which it
was spoken, than the speech itself that en-
couraged me. It was also true that she need
not have recognized me; and even if she
had, she certainly was not obliged to thank
me over again.
All this was indescribably flattering, and
all the more so that it followed so quickly on
her slight reproof.
The tone in which she spoke had become
low and timid, and I observed that she
turned her head quickly towards a second


THE DRAGON VOLANT. I 5
door of the room, I fancied that the gentle-
man in the black wig, a jealous husband,
perhaps, might reappear through it. Almost
at the same moment, a voice at once reedy
and nasal, was heard snarling some directions
to a servant, and evidently approaching. It
was the voice that had thanked me so pro-
fusely, from the carriage windows, about an
hour before. *
“Monsieur will have the goodness to re-
tire,” said the lady, in a tone that resembled
entreaty, at the same time gently waving her
hand toward the door through which I had
entered. Bowing again very low, I stepped
back, and closed the door.
I ran down the stairs, very much elated. I
saw the host of the Belle Etoile which, as I
said, was the sign and designation of my inn.
I described the apartment I had just
quitted, said I liked it, and asked whether I
could have it.


16 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
He was extremely troubled, but that apart-
ment and two adjoining rooms were en-
gaged—
“By whom?”
“People of distinction.”
“But who are they? They must have
names, or titles.”
“Undoubtedly, Monsieur, but such a
stream is rolling into Paris, that we have
ceased to inquire the names or titles of our
guests—we designate them simply by the
rooms they occupy.”
“What stay do they make?”
“Even that, Monsieur, I cannot answer.
It does not interest us. Our rooms, while
this continues, can never be, for a moment,
disengaged.”
“I should have liked those rooms so much !
Is one of them a sleeping apartment?”
“Yes, sir, and Monsieur will observe that
people do not usually engage bed-rooms,
unless they mean to stay the night.”


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 17
“Well, I can, I suppose, have some rooms,
any, I don’t care in what part of the house?”
“Certainly, Monsieur can have two apart-
ments. They are the last at present disen-
gaged.”
I took them instantly.
It was plain these people meant to make a
stay here; at least they would not go till
morning. I began to feel that I was all but
engaged in an adventure. w
I took possession of my rooms, and looked
out of the window, which I found com—
manded the inn-yard. Many horses were
being liberated from the traces, hot and
weary, and others fresh from the stables,
being put to. A great many vehicles—some
private carriages, others, like mine, of that
public class, which is equivalent to our old
English post-chaise, were standing on the
pavement, waiting their turn for relays.
Fussy servants were to-ing and fro-ing, and
VOL. II. C


18 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
idle ones lounging or laughing, and the scene,
on the whole, was animated and amusing.
Among these objects, I thought I recog-
nized the travelling carriage, and one of the
servants of the “persons of distinction” about
whom I was, just then, so profoundly in-
terested.
I therefore ran down the stairs, made my
way to the back door; and so, behold me,
in a moment, upon the uneven pavement,
among all these sights and sounds which in
such a place attend upon a period of extra-
ordinary crush and traffic.
By this time the sun was near its setting,
and threw its golden beams on the red brick
chimneys of the offices, and made the two
barrels, that figured as pigeon-houses, on the
tops of poles, look as if they were on fire.
Everything in this light becomes picturesque;
and things interest us which, in the sober
grey of morning, are dull enough.


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 19
After a little search, I lighted upon the
very carriage, of which I was in quest. A
servant was locking one of the doors, for it
was made with the security of lock and key.
I paused near, looking at the panel of the
door.
“A very pretty device that red stork!” I
observed, pointing to the shield on the door,
“ and no doubt indicates a distinguished
family?”
The servant looked at me, for a moment,
as he placed the little key in his pocket, and
said with a slightly sarcastic bow and smile,
“Monsieur is at liberty to conjecture.”
Nothing daunted, I forthwith administered
that laxative which, on occasion, acts so
happily upon the tongue—I mean a “tip.”
The servant looked at the Napoleon in his
hand, and then, in my face, with a sincere
expression of surprise.
“Monsieur is very generous!”
C 2.


2O IN A GLASS DARKLY.
“Not worth mentioning—who are the
lady and gentleman who came here, in this
carriage, and whom, you may remember, I
and my servant assisted to-day in an emer-
gency, when their horses had come to the
ground **
“They are the Count, and the young lady
we call the Countess—but I know not, she
may be his daughter.”
“Can you tell me where they live?”
“Upon my honour, Monsieur, I am unable
—I know not.”
“Not know where your master lives |
Surely you know something more about him
than his name P”
“Nothing worth relating, Monsieur; in
fact, I was hired in Bruxelles, on the very
day they started. Monsieur Picard, my
fellow-servant, Monsieur the Comte's gentle-
man, he has been years in his service and
knows everything; but he never speaks


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 28
except to communicate an order. From him
I have learned nothing. We are going to
Paris, however, and there I shall speedily
pick up all about them. At present I am .
as ignorant of all that as Monsieur him-
self.”
“And where is Monsieur Picard?”
“He has gone to the cutler's to get his
razors set. But I do not think he will tell
anything.”
This was a poor harvest for my golden
sowing. The man, I think, spoke truth,
and would honestly have betrayed the secrets
of the family, if he had possessed any. I
took my leave politely; and mounting the
stairs, again I found myself once more in my
1 OOnn.
Forthwith I summoned my servant.
Though I had brought him with me from
England, he was a native of France—a useful
fellow, sharp, bustling, and, of course, quite


22 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
familiar with the ways and tricks of his
countrymen.
“St. Clair, shut the door; come here. I
can't rest till I have made out something
about those people of rank who have got the
apartments under mine. Here are fifteen
francs; make out the servants we assisted to-
day; have them to a petit souper, and come
back and tell me their entire history. I have,
this moment, seen one of them who knows
nothing, and has communicated it. The
other, whose name I forget, is the unknown
nobleman's valet, and knows everything.
Him you must pump. It is, of course, the
venerable peer, and not the young lady who
accompanies him, that interests me—you
understand? Begone! fly! and return with
all the details I sigh for, and every circum-
stance that can possibly interest me.”
It was a commission which admirably
suited the tastes and spirits of my worthy


CHAPTER III.
DEATH AND LOVE TOGETHER MATED.
HEN the day drags, when a man
is solitary, and in a fever of im-
patience and suspense; when the minute-hand
of his watch travels as slowly as the hour-
hand used to do, and the hour-hand has lost all
appreciable motion; when he yawns, and
beats the devil's tatto, and flattens his hand-
some nose against the window, and whistles
tunes he hates, and, in short, does not know
what to do with himself, it is deeply to be
regretted that he cannot make a solemn


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 25
dinner of three courses more than once in a
day. The laws of matter, to which we are
slaves, deny us that resource.
But in the times I speak of, supper was
still a substantial meal, and its hour was
approaching. This was consolatory. Three-
quarters of an hour, however, still inter-
posed. How was I to dispose of that
interval?
I had two or three idle books, it is true,
as travelling-companions; but there are many
moods in which one cannot read. My novel
lay with my rug and walking-stick on the
sofa, and I did not care if the heroine and
the hero were both drowned together in the
water-barrel that I saw in the inn-yard under
my window.
I took a turn or two up and down my
room, and sighed, looking at myself in the
glass, adjusted my great white “choker,”
folded and tied after Brummel, the immortal


26 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
“Beau,” put on a buff waistcoat and my blue
swallow-tailed coat with gilt buttons; I
deluged my pocket handkerchief with Eau-
de-Cologne (we had not then the variety of
bouquets with which the genius of perfumery
has since blessed us); I arranged my hair, on
which I piqued myself, and which I loved to
groom in those days. That dark-brown
chevelure, with a natural curl, is now repre-
sented by a few dozen perfectly white hairs,
and its place—a smooth, bald, pink head—
knows it no more. But let us forget these
mortifications. It was then rich, thick, and
dark-brown. I was making a very careful
toilet. I took my unexceptionable hat from
its case, and placed it lightly on my wise
head, as nearly as memory and practice
enabled me to do so, at that very slight
inclination which the immortal person I have
mentioned was wont to give to his. A pair
of light French gloves and a rather club-like


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 27
knotted walking-stick, such as just then came
into vogue, for a year or two again in Eng-
land, in the phraseology of Sir Walter Scott's
romances, “completed my equipment.”
All this attention to effect, preparatory to
a mere lounge in the yard, or on the steps
of the Belle Etoile, was a simple act of
devotion to the wonderful eyes which I had
that evening beheld for the first time, and
never, never could forget! In plain terms,
it was all done in the vague, very vague
hope that those eyes might behold the un-
exceptionable get-up of a melancholy slave,
and retain the image, not altogether without
secret approbation.
As I completed my preparations the light
failed me; the last level streak of sunlight
disappeared, and a fading twilight only
remained. I sighed in unison with the
pensive hour, and threw open the window,
intending to look out for a moment before


28 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
going downstairs. I perceived instantly that
the window underneath mine was also open,
for I heard two voices in conversation,
although I could not distinguish what they
were saying.
The male voice was peculiar; it was, as
I told you, reedy and nasal. I knew it, of
course, instantly. The answering voice
spoke in those sweet tones which I recognised
only too easily. The dialogue was only for
a minute; the repulsive male voice laughed,
I fancied, with a kind of devilish satire, and
retired from the window, so that I almost
ceased to hear it.
The other voice remained nearer the
window, but not so near as at first.
It was not an altercation; there was evi-
dently nothing the least exciting in the
colloquy. What would I not have given that
it had been a quarrel—a violent one—and
I the redresser of wrongs, and the defender


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 29
of insulted beauty! Alas! so far as I could
pronounce upon the character of the tones
I heard, they might be as tranquil a pair as
any in existence. In a moment more the
lady began to sing an odd little chanson. I
need not remind you how much farther
the voice is heard singing than speaking. I
could distinguish the words. The voice was
of that exquisitely sweet kind which is called,
I believe, a semi-contralto; it had something
pathetic, and something, I fancied, a little
mocking in its tones. I venture a clumsy,
but adequate translation of the words:—
“Death and Love, together mated,
Watch and wait in ambuscade;
At early morn, or else belated,
They meet and mark the man or maid.
“Burning sigh, or breath that freezes,
Numbs or maddens man or maid;
Death or Love the victim seizes,
Breathing from their ambuscade.”.


3o IN A GLASS DARKLY.
“Enough, Madame!” said the did voice,
with sudden severity. “We do not desire, I
believe, to amuse the grooms and hostlers in
the yard with our music.”
The lady's voice laughed gaily.
“You desire to quarrel, Madame!” And
the old man, I presume, shut down the
window. Down it went, at all events, with
a rattle that might easily have broken the
glass.
Of all thin partitions, glass is the most
effectual excluder of sound. I heard no
more, not even the subdued hum of the
colloquy.
What a charming voice this Countess had
How it melted, swelled, and trembled ! How
it moved, and even agitated me! What a
pity that a hoarse old jackdaw should have
power to crow down such a Philomel!
“Alas! what a life it is!” I moralized,
wisely. “That beautiful Countess, with the


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 38
patience of an angel and the beauty of a
Venus and the accomplishments of all the
Muses, a slave! She knows perfectly who
occupies the apartments over hers; she
heard me raise my window. One may con-
jecture pretty well for whom that music was
intended—ay, old gentleman, and for whom
you suspected it to be intended.” -
In a very agreeable flutter I left my room,
and descending the stairs, passed the Count's
door very much at my leisure. There was
just a chance that the beautiful songstress
might emerge. I dropped my stick on the
lobby, near their door, and you may be
sure it took me some little time to pick it
up ! Fortune, nevertheless, did not favour me.
I could not stay on the lobby all night pick-
ing up my stick, so I went down to the hall.
I consulted the clock, and found that there
remained but a quarter of an hour to the
moment of supper.


32 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
Every one was roughing it now, every inn
in confusion; people might do at such a junc-
ture what they never did before. Was it just
possible that, for once, the Count and
Countess would take their chairs at the table-
d'hôte P


CHAPTER IV.
MONSI EUR DROQVILLE.
ULL of this exciting hope, I sauntered
out, upon the steps of the Belle
Etoile. It was now night, and a pleasant
moonlight over everything. I had entered
more into my romance since my arrival, and
this poetic light heightened the sentiment.
What a drama, if she turned out to be the
Count's daughter, and in love with me !
What a delightful—tragedy, if she turned out
to be the Count's wife
In this luxurious mood, I was accosted by
VOL. II. D


34. IN A GLASS DARKLY.
* *
a tall and very elegantly-made gentleman, who
appeared to be about fifty. His air was
courtly and graceful, and there was in his
whole manner and appearance something so
distinguished, that it was impossible not
to suspect him of being a person of
rank.
He had been standing upon the steps,
looking out, like me, upon the moonlight
effects that transformed, as it were, the objects
and buildings in the little street. He accosted
me, I say, with the politeness, at once easy
and lofty, of a French nobleman of the old
school. He asked me if I were not Mr.
Beckett? I assented; and he immediately
introduced himself as the Marquis d'Har-
monville (this information he gave me in a
low tone), and asked leave to present me with
a letter from Lord R—, who knew my
father slightly, and had once done me, also,
a trifling kindness.


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 35
*
This English peer, I may mention, stood
very high in the political world, and was
named as the most probable successor to the
distinguished post of English Minister at .
Paris.
I received it with a low bow, and read:
“MY DEAR BECKETT,
“I beg to introduce my very dear friend,
the Marquis d'Harmonville, who will explain
to you the nature of the services it may be
in your power to render him and us.”
He went on to speak of the Marquis as a
man whose great wealth, whose intimate
relations with the old families, and whose
legitimate influence with the court rendered
him the fittest possible person for those
friendly offices which, at the desire of
his own sovereign, and of our government,
he has so obligingly undertaken.
D 2


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 37
I was utterly puzzled. I could scarcely
boast of Lord
no one named Haxton, and, except my hatter,
’s acquaintance. I knew
no one called Walton; and this peer wrote
as if we were intimate friends ! I looked
at the back of the letter, and the mystery
was solved. And now, to my consternation
—for I was plain Richard Beckett–I read—
“To George Stanhope Beckett, Esq., M.P.”
I looked with consternation in the face of
the Marquis.
“What apology can I offer to Monsieur
the Mar—to Monsieur Droqville It is
true my name is Beckett—it is true I am
known, though very slightly to Lord R——;
but the letter was not intended for me. My
name is Richard Beckett—this is to Mr.
Stanhope Beckett, the member for Shillings-
worth. What can I say, or do, in this
unfortunate situation ? I can only give you


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 39
visit me at Claironville, in Normandy, where
I hope to see, on the 15th of August, a
great many friends, whose acquaintance it
might interest you to make, I shall be too
happy.”
I thanked him, of course, very gratefully
d
for his hospitality. He continued:
“I cannot, for the present, see my friends,
for reasons which you may surmise, at my
house in Paris. But Monsieur will be so
good as to let me know the hotel he means
to stay at in Paris; and he will find that
although the Marquis d'Harmonville is not
in town, that Monsieur Droqville will not
lose sight of him.”
With many acknowledgments I gave him
the information he desired.
“And in the meantime,” he continued,
“if you think of any way in which Mon-
sieur Droqville can be of use to you, our
communication shall not be interrupted, and


4o IN A GLASS DARKLY.
I shall so manage matters that you can easily
let me know.”
I was very much flattered. The Marquis
had, as we say, taken a fancy to me. Such
likings at first sight often ripen into lasting
friendships. To be sure it was just possible
that the Marquis might think it prudent to
keep the involuntary depository of a political
secret, even so vague a one, in good
humour.
Very graciously the Marquis took his
leave, going up the stairs of the Belle .
Etoile.
I remained upon the steps, for a minute
lost in speculation upon this new theme of
interest. But the wonderful eyes, the thrill-
ing voice, the exquisite figure of the beauti-
ful lady who had taken possession of my
imagination, quickly reasserted their influence.
I was again gazing at the sympathetic moon,
and descending the steps, Iloitered along the


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 4.1
pavements among strange objects, and houses
that were antique and picturesque, in a dreamy
state, thinking.
In a little while, I turned into the inn-
yard again. There had come a lull. Instead
of the noisy place it was, an hour or two
before, the yard was perfectly still and
empty, except for the carriages that stood
here and there. Perhaps there was a ser-
vants table-d'hôte just then. I was rather
pleased to find solitude; and undisturbed I
found out my lady-love's carriage, in the
moonlight. I mused, I walked round it;
I was as utterly foolish and maudlin as very
young men, in my situation, usually are.
The blinds were down, the doors, I suppose,
locked. The brilliant moonlight revealed
everything, and cast sharp, black shadows of
wheel, and bar, and spring, on the pavement.
I stood before the escutcheon painted on the
door, which I had examined in the daylight.


4-2 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
I wondered how often her eyes had rested
on the same object. I pondered in a charm-
ing dream. A harsh, loud voice, over my
shoulder, said suddenly, -
“A red stork—good! The stork is a bird
of prey; it is vigilant, greedy, and catches
gudgeons. Red, too!—blood red ! Ha!
ha! the symbol is appropriate.”
I had turned about, and beheld the palest
face I ever saw. It was broad, ugly, and
malignant. The figure was that of a French
officer, in undress, and was six feet high.
Across the nose and eyebrow there was a
deep scar, which made the repulsive face
grimmer. -
The officer elevated his chin and his eye-
brows, with a scoffing chuckle, and said,—
: I have shot a stork, with a rifle bullet,
when he thought himself safe in the clouds,
for mere sport!” (He shrugged, and laughed
malignantly). “See, Monsieur; when a man


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 43
like me—a man of energy, you understand,
a man with all his wits about him, a man
who has made the tour of Europe under
canvas, and, parbleu ! often without it—
resolves to discover a secret, expose a crime,
catch a thief, spit a robber on the point of
his sword, it is odd if he does not succeed.
Ha! ha! ha! Adieu, Monsieur !”
He turned with an angry whisk on his
heel, and swaggered with long strides out of
the gate.


CHAPTER V.
SUPPER AT THE BELLE ETOILE.
HE French army were in a rather sa-
vage temper, just then. The English,
especially, had but scant courtesy to expect
at their hands. It was plain, however, that
the cadaverous gentleman who had just apos-
trophized the heraldry of the Count's car-
riage, with such mysterious acrimony, had
not intended any of his malevolence for me.
He was stung by some old recollection, and
had marched off, seething with fury.
I had received one of those unacknow-


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 4-5
ledged shocks which startle us, when fancy-
ing ourselves perfectly alone, we discover on
a sudden, that our antics have been watched
by a spectator, almost at our elbow. In
this case, the effect was enhanced by the
extreme repulsiveness of the face, and, I may
add, its proximity, for, as I think, it almost
touched mine. The enigmatical harangue
of this person, so full of hatred and implied
denunciation, was still in my ears. Here
at all events was new matter for the indus-
trious fancy of a lover to work upon.
It was time now to go to the table-d'hôte.
Who could tell what lights the gossip of the
supper-table might throw upon the subject
that interested me so powerfully
I stepped into the room, my eyes searching
the little assembly, about thirty people, for
the persons who specially interested me.
It was not easy to induce people, so hurried
and overworked as those of the Belle Etoile


46 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
just now, to send meals up to one's private
apartments, in the midst of this unparalleled
confusion; and, therefore, many people who
did not like it, might find themselves reduced
to the alternative of supping at the table-
d'hôte, or starving.
The Count was not there, nor his beautiful
companion; but the Marquis d'Harmonville,
whom I hardly expected to see in so public a
place, signed, with a significant smile, to a
vacant chair beside himself. I secured it,
and he seemed pleased, and almost imme-
diately entered into conversation with me.
“This is, probably, your first visit to
France P” he said.
I told him it was, and he said:
“You must not think me very curious and
impertinent; but Paris is about the most
dangerous capital a high-spirited and generous
young gentleman could visit without a
Mentor. If you have not an experienced


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 47
* >
friend as a companion during your visit——
He paused.
I told him I was not so provided, but that
I had my wits about me; that I had seen a
good deal of life in England, and that, I
fancied, human nature was pretty much the
same in all parts of the world. The Marquis
shook his head, smiling.
“You will find very marked differences,
notwithstanding,” he said. “Peculiarities of
intellect and peculiarities of character, un-
doubtedly, do pervade different nations; and
this results, among the criminal classes, in a
style of villainy no less peculiar. In Paris,
the class who live by their wits, is three or
four times as great as in London; and they
live much better; some of them even splen-
didly. They are more ingenious than the
London rogues; they have more animation,
and invention, and the dramatic faculty, in
which your countrymen are deficient, is


48 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
everywhere. These invaluable attributes place
them upon a totally different level. They
can affect the manners and enjoy the luxuries
of people of distinction. They live, many
of them, by play.”
“So do many of our London rogues.”
“Yes, but in a totally different way. They
are the habitués of certain gaming-tables,
billiard-rooms, and other places, including
your races, where high play goes on ; and by
superior knowledge of chances, by masking
their play, by means of confederates, by
means of bribery, and other artifices, varying
with the subject of their imposture, they rob
the unwary. But here it is more elaborately
done, and with a really exquisite finesse.
There are people whose manners, style,
conversation, are unexceptionable, living in
handsome houses in the best situations, with
everything about them in the most refined
taste, and exquisitely luxurious, who impose


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 4-9
even upon the Parisian bourgeois, who be-
lieve them to be, in good faith, people of
rank and fashion, because their habits are
expensive and refined, and their houses are
frequented by foreigners of distinction, and,
to a degree, by foolish young Frenchmen of
rank. At all these houses play goes on.
The ostensible host and hostess seldom join
in it; they provide it simply to plunder their
guests, by means of their accomplices, and
thus wealthy strangers are inveigled and
robbed.”
“But I have heard of a young English-
man, a son of Lord Rooksbury, who broke
two Parisian gaming-tables only last year.”
“I see,” he said, laughing, “you are come
here to do likewise. I, myself, at about your
age, undertook the same spirited enterprise.
I raised no less a sum than five hundred
thousand francs to begin with; I expected to
carry all before me by the simple expedient
VOL. II. * E


5o IN A GLASS DARKLY.
of going on doubling my stakes. I had
heard of it, and I fancied that the sharpers,
who kept the table, knew nothing of the
matter. I found, however, that they not
only knew all about it, but had provided
against the possibility of any such experi-
ments; and I was pulled up before I had
well begun, by a rule which forbids the
doubling of an original stake more than four
times, consecutively.”
“And is that rule in force still?” I inquired,
chap-fallen.
He laughed and shrugged, “Of course it
is, my young friend. People who live by an
art, always understand it better than an ama-
teur. I see you had formed the same plan,
and no doubt came provided.”
I confessed I had prepared for conquest
upon a still grander scale. I had arrived
with a purse of thirty thousand pounds ster-
ling,


52 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
and friendship. It oddly happens he is in
this house at this moment. I recognized his
servant, and made him a visit in his apart-
ments here, and found him the same brave,
kind, honourable man I always knew him.
But that he is living so entirely out of the
world, now, I should have made a point of
introducing you. Fifteen years ago he would
have been the man of all others to consult.
The gentleman I speak of is the Comte de
St. Alyre. He represents a very old family.
He is the very soul of honour, and the most
sensible man in the world, except in one par-
ticular.”
“And that particular " I hesitated. I
was now deeply interested.
“Is that he has married a charming crea-
ture, at least five-and-forty years younger
than himself, and is, of course, although I
believe absolutely without cause, horribly
jealous.”


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 53
“And the lady ?”
“The Countess is, I believe, in every way
worthy of so good a man,” he answered, a
little drily.
“I think I heard her sing this evening.”
“Yes, I daresay; she is very accomplished.”
After a few moments' silence he continued.
“I must not lose sight of you, for I should
be sorry, when next you meet my friend
Lord R—, that you had to tell him you
had been pigeoned in Paris. A rich English-
man as you are, with so large a sum at his
Paris bankers, young, gay, generous, a thou-
sand ghouls and harpies will be contending
who shall be first to seize and devour
you.”
At this moment I received something like
a jerk from the elbow of the gentleman at
my right. It was an accidental jog, as he
turned in his seat.
“On the honour of a soldier, there is no


54. IN A GLASS DARKLY.
man's flesh in this company heals so fast as
mine.”
The tone in which this was spoken was
harsh and stentorian, and almost made me
bounce. I looked round and recognised the
officer, whose large white face had half scared
me in the inn-yard, wiping his mouth
furiously, and then with a gulp of Maçon,
he went on—
“No one ! It's not blood; it is ichor !
it's miracle | Set aside stature, thew, bone,
and muscle—set aside courage, and by all
the angels of death, I'd fight a lion naked
and dash his teeth down his jaws with my
fist, and flog him to death with his own tail!
Set aside, I say, all those attributes, which I
am allowed to possess, and I am worth six
men in any campaign, for that one quality
of healing as I do—rip me up; punch me
through, tear me to tatters with bomb-shells,
and nature has me whole again, while your


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 55
tailor would fine-draw an old-coat. Parbleu !
gentlemen, if you saw me naked, you would
laugh? Look at my hand, a sabre-cut across
the palm, to the bone, to save my head,
taken up with three stitches, and five days
afterwards I was playing ball with an English
general, a prisoner in Madrid, against the
wall of the convent of the Santa Maria de la
Castita ! At Arcola, by the great devil him-
self! that was an action. Every man there,
gentlemen, swallowed as much smoke in five
minutes as would smother you all, in this
room | I received, at the same moment, two
musket balls in the thighs, a grape shot
through the calf of my leg, a lance through
my left shoulder, a piece of a shrapnel in
the left deltoid, a bayonet through the
cartilage of my right ribs, a sabre-cut that
carried away a pound of flesh from my
chest, and the better part of a congreve
rocket on my forehead. Pretty well, ha,


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 57
minute, if I had not whipped off my sash
like a flash of lightning, tied it round my
leg above the wound, whipt a bayonet out of
the back of a dead Prussian, and passing it
under, made a tournequet of it with a couple
of twists, and so stayed the hemorrhage, and
saved my life. But, sacré bleu ! gentlemen,
I lost so much blood, I have been as pale as
the bottom of a plate ever since. No mattter.
A trifle. Blood well spent, gentlemen.”
He applied himself now to his bottle of vin
ordinaire.
The Marquis had closed his eyes, and
looked resigned and disgusted, while all this
was going on.
“Gargon,” said the officer, for the first
time, speaking in a low tone over the back
of his chair to the waiter; “who came in
that travelling carriage, dark yellow and
black, that stands in the middle of the yard,
with arms and supporters emblazoned on


58 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
the door, and a red stork, as red as my
facings?”
The waiter could not say.
The eye of the eccentric officer, who had
suddenly grown grim and serious, and
seemed to have abandoned the general con-
versation to other people, lighted, as it were,
accidentally, on me.
“Pardon me, Monsieur,” he said. “Did
I not see you examining the panel of that
carriage at the same time that I did so, this
evening? Can you tell me who arrived in
it?”
“I rather think the Count and Countess
de St. Alyre.”
“And are they here, in the Belle Etoile?”
he asked.
“They have got apartments up-stairs,” I
answered.
He started up, and half pushed his chair
from the table. He quickly sat down again,


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 59
and I could hear him sacré-ing and muttering
to himself, and grinning and scowling. I
could not tell whether he was alarmed or
furious.
I turned to say a word or two to the
Marquis, but he was gone. Several other
people had dropped out also, and the supper
party soon broke up.
Two or three substantial pieces of wood
smouldered on the hearth, for the night had
turned out chilly. I sat down by the fire in
a great arm-chair, of carved oak, with a
marvellously high back, that looked as old as
the days of Henry IV.
“Garçon,” said I, “do you happen to
know who that officer is ?”
“That is Colonel Gaillarde, Monsieur.”
“Has he been often here P”
“Once before, Monsieur, for a week; it
is a year since.”
“He is the palest man I ever saw.”


6o IN A GLASS DARKLY.
“That is true, Monsieur; he has been
often taken for a revenant.”
“Can you give me a bottle of really good
Burgundy?”
“The best in France, Monsieur.”
“Place it, and a glass by my side, on this
table, if you please. I may sit here for half
an hour?”
“Certainly, Monsieur.”
I was very comfortable, the wine excellent,
and my thoughts glowing and serene. “Beau-
tiful Countess Beautiful Countess I shall we
ever be better acquainted.”


CHA P T E R VI.
THE NAKED SWORD.
MAN who has been posting all day
long, and changing the air he
breathes every half hour, who is well pleased
with himself, and has nothing on earth to
trouble him, and who sits alone by a fire in
a comfortable chair after having eaten a
hearty supper, may be pardoned if he takes
an accidental nap.
I had filled my fourth glass when I fell
asleep. My head, I daresay, hung uncom-
fortably; and it is admitted, that a variety


62 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
of French dishes is not the most favourable
precursor to pleasant dreams.
I had a dream as I took mine ease in mine
inn on this occasion. I fancied myself in a
huge cathedral, without light, except from
four tapers that stood at the corners of a
raised platform hung with black, on which
lay, draped also in black, what seemed to
me the dead body of the Countess de St
Alyre. The place seemed empty, it was
cold, and I could see only (in the halo of the
candles) a little way round.
The little I saw bore the character of
Gothic gloom, and helped my fancy to shape
and furnish the black void that yawned all
round me. I heard a sound like the slow
tread of two persons walking up the flagged
aisle. A faint echo told of the vastness of
the place. An awful sense of expectation
was upon me, and I was horribly frightened
when the body that lay on the catafalque


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 63
said (without stirring), in a whisper that froze
me, “They come to place me in the grave
alive; save me.”
I found that I could neither speak nor
move. I was horribly frightened.
The two people who approached now
emerged from the darkness. One, the Count
de St. Alyre glided to the head of the figure
and placed his long thin hands under it.
The white-faced Colonel, with the scar across
his face, and a look of infernal triumph,
placed his hands under her feet, and they
began to raise her. -
With an indescribable effort I broke the
spell that bound me, and started to my feet
with a gasp.
I was wide awake, but the broad, wicked
face of Colonel Gaillarde was staring, white
as death, at me, from the other side of the
hearth. “Where is she P” I shuddered.


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 65
enigmatically, and wagged his head with a
chuckle. “Worse dreams,” he repeated.
“What does Monsieur the Colonel mean?”
I inquired.
“I am trying to find that out myself,”
said the Colonel; “and I think I shall.
When I get the first inch of the thread fast
between my finger and thumb, it goes hard
but I follow it up, bit by bit, little by little,
tracing it this way and that, and up and
down, and round about, until the whole
clue is wound up on my thumb, and the
end, and its secret, fast in my fingers. In-
genious! Crafty as five foxes! wide awake
as a weazel ! Parbleu ! if I had descended to
that occupation I should have made my
fortune as a spy. Good wine here?” he
glanced interrogatively at my bottle.
“Very good,” said I, “Will Monsieur
the Colonel try a glass?”
He took the largest he could find, and
VoL. II. F



66 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
filled it, raised it with a bow, and drank it
slowly. “Ah! ah! Bah! That is not it,”
he exclaimed, with some disgust, filling it
again. “You ought to have told me to
order your Burgundy, and they would not
have brought you that stuff.”
I got away from this man as soon as I
civilly could, and, putting on my hat, I
walked out with no other company than my
sturdy walking stick. I visited the inn-yard,
and looked up to the windows of the
Countess's apartments. They were closed,
however, and I had not even the unsub-
stantial consolation of contemplating the light
in which that beautiful lady was at that
moment writing, or reading, or sitting and
thinking of-any one you please.
I bore this serious privation as well as I
could, and took a little saunter through the
town. I shan’t bore you with moonlight
effects, nor with the maunderings of a man


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 67
who has fallen in love at first sight with
a beautiful face. My ramble, it is enough
to say, occupied about half-an-hour, and, re-
turning by a slight détour, I found myself in
a little square, with about two high gabled
houses on each side, and a rude stone statue,
worn by centuries of rain, on a pedestal in
the centre of the pavement. Looking at this
statue was a slight and rather tall man, whom
I instantly recognized as the Marquis d'Har-
monville: he knew me almost as quickly.
He walked a step towards me, shrugged and
laughed:
“You are surprised to find Monsieur
Droqville staring at that old stone figure by
moonlight. Anything to pass the time. You,
I see, suffer from ennui, as I do. These little
provincial towns ! Heavens! what an effort
it is to live in them ! If I could regret hav-
ing formed in early life a friendship that does
me honour, I think its condemning me to a
F 2.


68 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
sojourn in such a place would make me do
so. You go on towards Paris, I suppose, in
the morning ?”
“I have ordered horses.”
“As for me I await a letter, or an arrival,
either would emancipate me; but I can’t say
how soon either event will happen.” -
“Can I be of any use in this matter?” I
began.
“None, Monsieur, I thank you a thousand
times. No, this is a piece in which every
rôle is already cast. I am but an amateur,
and induced, solely by friendship, to take a
part.”
So he talked on, for a time, as we walked
slowly toward the Belle Etoile, and then came
a silence, which I broke by asking him if he
knew anything of Colonel Gaillarde.
“Oh! yes, to be sure. He is a little mad;
he has had some bad injuries of the head.
He used to plague the people in the War


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 69
Office to death. He has always some delu-
sion. They contrived some employment for
him—not regimental, of course—but in this
campaign Napoleon, who could spare nobody,
placed him in command of a regiment. He
was always a desperate fighter, and such men
were more than ever needed.”
There is, or was, a second inn, in this
town, called l’Ecu de France. At its door
the Marquis stopped, bade me a mysterious
good-night, and disappeared.
As I walked slowly toward my inn, I met,
in the shadow of a row of poplars, the gargon
who had brought me my Burgundy a little
time ago. I was thinking of Colonel Gail-
larde, and I stopped the little waiter as he
passed me.
“You said, I think, that Colonel Gaillarde
was at the Belle Etoile for a week at one
time.”
“Yes, Monsieur.”


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 71
Count de St. Alyre, who, in his travelling
costume, with his black silk scarf covering the
lower part of his face, confronted him; he
had evidently been intercepted in an en-
deavour to reach his carriage. A little in the
rear of the Count stood the Countess, also in
travelling costume, with her thick black veil
down, and holding in her delicate fingers a
white rose. You can’t conceive a more dia-
bolical effigy of hate and fury than the
Colonel; the knotted veins stood out on his
forehead, his eyes were leaping from their
sockets, he was grinding his teeth, and froth
was on his lips. His sword was drawn, in
his hand, and he accompanied his yelling de-
nunciations with stamps upon the floor and
flourishes of his weapon in the air.
The host of the Belle Etoile was talking to
the Colonel in soothing terms utterly thrown
away. Two waiters, pale with fear, stared
uselessly from behind. The Colonel screamed,


72 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
and thundered, and whirled his sword. “I
was not sure of your red birds of prey; I
could not believe you would have the audacity
to travel on high roads, and to stop at honest
inns, and lie under the same roof with honest
men. You ! you ! both—vampires, wolves,
ghouls. Summon the gendarmes, I say.
By St. Peter and all the devils, if either of
you try to get out of that door I'll take your
heads off.”
For a moment I had stood aghast. Here
was a situation I walked up to the lady;
she laid her hand wildly upon my arm.
“Oh ! Monsieur,” she whispered, in great
agitation, “that dreadful madman | What
are we to do? He won't let us pass; he will
kill my husband.”
“Fear nothing, Madame,” I answered,
with romantic devotion, and stepping be-
tween the Count and Gaillarde, as he shrieked
his invective, “Hold your tongue, and clear


CHAPTER VII.
T H E W H IT E R O S E.
WAS too quick for Colonel Gaillarde.
As he raised his sword, reckless of all
consequences but my condign punishment,
and quite resolved to cleave me to the teeth,
I struck him across the side of his head, with
my heavy stick; and while he staggered
back, I struck him another blow, nearly in
the same place, that felled him to the floor,
where he lay as if dead.
I did not care one of his own regimental
buttons, whether he was dead or not; I was,


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 75
at that moment, carried away by such a tu-
mult of delightful and diabolical emotions !
I broke his sword under my foot, and
flung the pieces across the street. The old
Count de St. Alyre skipped nimbly without
looking to the right or left, or thanking
anybody, over the floor, out of the door,
down the steps, and into his carriage. In-
stantly I was at the side of the beautiful
Countess, thus left to shift for herself; I
offered her my arm, which she took, and I
led her to her carriage. She entered, and I
shut the door. All this without a word.
I was about to ask if there were any com-
mands with which she would honour me—
my hand was laid upon the lower edge of
the window, which was open.
The lady's hand was laid upon mine
timidly and excitedly. Her lips almost
touched my cheek as she whispered hur-
riedly.


76 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
“I may never see you more, and, oh!
that I could forget you. Go-farewell—
for God's sake, go!”
I pressed her hand for a moment. She
withdrew it, but tremblingly pressed into
mine the rose which she had held in her
fingers during the agitating scene she had
just passed through. -
All this took place while the Count was
commanding, entreating, cursing his servants,
tipsy, and out of the way during the crisis,
my conscience afterwards insinuated, by my
clever contrivance. They now mounted to
their places with the agility of alarm. The
postillions whips cracked, the horses scram-
bled into a trot, and away rolled the carriage,
with its precious freightage, along the quaint
main street, in the moonlight, toward Paris.
I stood on the pavement, till it was quite
lost to eye and ear in the distance.
With a deep sigh, I then turned, my white


78 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
Colonel's skull was fractured, at all events
there was concussion of the seat of thought,
and quite enough work for his remarkable
self-healing powers, to occupy him for a
fortnight. *
I began to grow a little uneasy. A dis-
agreeable surprise, if my excursion, in which
I was to break banks and hearts, and, as
you see, heads, should end upon the gallows
or the guillotine. I was not clear, in those
times of political oscillation, which was the
established apparatus.
The Colonel was conveyed, snorting apo-
plectically to his room.
I saw my host in the apartment in which
we had supped. Wherever you employ a
force of any sort, to carry a point of real
importance, reject all nice calculations of
economy. Better to be a thousand per cent.
over the mark, than the smallest fraction of
a unit under it. I instinctively felt this.


8o IN A GLASS DARKLY.
motives, beside the desire to escape the
tedious inquisition of the law, for desiring
to recommence my journey to Paris with the
least possible delay. Judge what was my
horror then to learn, that for love or money,
horses were nowhere to be had that night.
The last pair in the town had been obtained
from the Ecu de France, by a gentleman
who dined and supped at the Belle Etoile,
and was obliged to proceed to Paris that
night.
Who was the gentleman? Had he actually
gone? Could he possibly be induced to wait
till morning?
The gentleman was now upstairs getting
his things together, and his name was
Monsieur Droqville.
I ran upstairs. I found my servant St.
Clair in my room. At sight of him, for a
moment, my thoughts were Turned into a
different channel.


82 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
the Count, was certainly the Countess. “Has
he not a daughter?”
“Yes; I believe a very beautiful and
charming young lady—I cannot say—it may
have been she, his daughter by an earlier
marriage. I saw only the Count himself to-
day.” -
The Marquis was growing a little sleepy
and, in a little while, he actually fell asleep
in his corner. I dozed and nodded; but the
Marquis slept like a top. He awoke only
for a minute or two at the next posting-
house, where he had fortunately secured
horses by sending on his man, he told me.
“You will excuse my being so dull a
companion,” he said, “but till to-night I
have had but two hours' sleep, for more
than sixty hours. I shall have a cup of
coffee here; I have had my nap. Permit
me to recommend you to do likewise. Their
coffee is really excellent.” He ordered two


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 83
cups of café noir, and waited, with his head
from the window. “We will keep the
cups,” he said, as he received them from the
waiter, “and the tray. Thank you.”
There was a little delay as he paid for
these things; and then he took in the little
tray, and handed me a cup of coffee.
I declined the tray; so he placed it on his
own knees, to act as a miniature table.
“I can’t endure being waited for and
hurried,” he said, “I like to sip my coffee
at leisure.”
I agreed. It really was the very perfection
of coffee.
“I, like Monsieur le Marquis, have slept
very little for the last two or three nights;
and find it difficult to keep awake. This
coffee will do wonders for me; it refreshes
one so.”
Before we had half done, the carriage
was again in motion.


84 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
For a time our coffee made us chatty, and
our conversation was animated.
The Marquis was extremely good-natured,
as well as clever, and gave me a brilliant and
amusing account of Parisian life, schemes,
and dangers, all put so as to furnish me
with practical warnings of the most valuable
kind.
In spite of the amusing and curious stories
which the Marquis related, with so much
point and colour, I felt myself again becom-
ing gradually drowsy and dreamy.
Perceiving this, no doubt, the Marquis
good-naturedly suffered our conversation to
subside into silence. The window next him
was open. He threw his cup out of it; and
did the same kind office for mine, and finally
the little tray flew after, and I heard it clank
on the road; a valuable waif, no doubt, for
some early wayfarer in wooden shoes.
I leaned back in my corner; I had my


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 85
beloved souvenir—my white rose—close to
my heart, folded, now, in white paper. It
inspired all manner of romantic dreams. I
began to grow more and more sleepy. But
actual slumber did not come. I was still
viewing, with my half-closed eyes, from my
corner, diagonally, the interior of the car-
riage.
I wished for sleep; but the barrier between
waking and sleeping seemed absolutely insur-
mountable; and instead, I entered into a
state of novel and indescribable indolence.
The Marquis lifted his despatch-box from
the floor, placed it on his knees, unlocked it,
and took out what proved to be a lamp,
which he hung with two hooks, attached to
it, to the window opposite to him. He
lighted it with a match, put on his spectacles,
and taking out a bundle of letters, began to
read them carefully.
We were making way very slowly. My



86 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
impatience had hitherto employed four horses
from stage to stage. We were in this emer-
gency, only too happy to have secured two.
But the difference in pace was depressing.
I grew tired of the monotony of seeing
the spectacled Marquis reading, folding, and
docketing, letter after letter. I wished to
shut out the image which wearied me, but
something prevented my being able to shut
my eyes. I tried again and again; but,
positively, I had lost the power of closing
them.
I would have rubbed my eyes, but I could
not stir my hand, my will no longer acted
on my body—I found that I could not move
one joint, or muscle, no more than I could,
by an effort of my will, have turned the
carriage about.
Up to this I had experienced no sense of
horror. Whatever it was, simple night-mare


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 87
was not the cause. I was awfully frightened!
Was I in a fit 2
It was horrible to see my good-natured
companion pursue his occupation so serenely,
when he might have dissipated my horrors
by a single shake.
I made a stupendous exertion to call out
but in vain; I repeated the effort again and
again, with no result.
My companion now tied up his letters,
and looked out of the window, humming an
air from an opera. He drew back his head,
and said, turning to me—
“Yes, I see the lights; we shall be there
in two or three minutes.”
He looked more closely at me, and with
a kind smile, and a little shrug, he said,
“Poor child ! how fatigued he must have
been—how profoundly he sleeps! when the
carriage stops he will waken.”
He then replaced his letters in the des-


88 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
patch-box, locked it, put his spectacles in his
pocket, and again looked out of the window.
We had entered a little town. I suppose
it was past two o'clock by this time. The
carriage drew up, I saw an inn-door open,
and a light issuing from it.
“Here we are!” said my companion, turn-
ing gaily to me. But I did not awake.
“Yes, how tired he must have been l”
he exclaimed, after he had waited for an
anSWer.
My servant was at the carriage door, and
opened it.
“Your master sleeps soundly, he is so
fatigued ! It would be cruel to disturb him.
You and I will go in, while they change the
horses, and take some refreshment, and
choose something that Monsieur Beckett will
like to take in the carriage, for when he
awakes by-and-by, he will, I am sure, be
hungry.”


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 89
He trimmed his lamp, poured in some
oil; and taking care not to disturb me, with
another kind smile, and another word or
caution to my servant, he got out, and I
heard him talking to St. Clair, as they
entered the inn-door, and I was left in my
corner, in the carriage, in the same state.


CHAPTER VIII.
A THREE MINUTEs’ VISIT.
HAVE suffered extreme and protracted
bodily pain, at different periods of my
life, but anything like that misery, thank
God, I never endured before or since. I
earnestly hope it may not resemble any type
of death, to which we are liable. I was,
indeed, a spirit in prison; and unspeakable
was my dumb and unmoving agony.
The power of thought remained clear and
active. Dull terror filled my mind. How
would this end ? Was it actual death ?


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 91
You will understand that my faculty of
observing was unimpaired. I could hear and
See anything as distinctly as ever I did in my
life. It was simply that my will had, as it
were, lost its hold of my body.
I told you that the Marquis d’Harmon-
ville had not extinguished his carriage lamp
on going into this village inn. I was listen-
ing intently, longing for his return, which
might result, by some lucky accident, in
awaking me from my catalepsy.
Without any sound of steps approaching,
to announce an arrival, the carriage-door
suddenly opened, and a total stranger got in
silently, and shut the door.
The lamp gave about as strong a light as
a wax-candle, so I could see the intruder
perfectly. He was a young man, with a
dark grey, loose surtout, made with a sort
of hood, which was pulled over his head.
I thought, as he moved, that I saw the gold


92 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
band of a military undress cap under it; and
I certainly saw the lace and buttons of a
uniform, on the cuffs of the coat that were
visible under the wide sleeves of his outside
wrapper.
This young man had thick moustaches,
and an imperial, and I observed that he had
a red scar running upward from his lip across
his cheek.
He entered, shut the door softly, and sat
down beside me. It was all done in a
moment; leaning toward me, and shading
his eyes with his gloved hand, he examined
my face closely, for a few seconds.
This man had come as noiselessly as a
ghost; and everything he did was accom-
plished with the rapidity and decision, that
indicated a well defined and pre-arranged
plan. His designs were evidently sinister.
I thought he was going to rob, and, perhaps,
murder me. I lay, nevertheless, like a corpse


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 93
under his hands. He inserted his hand in
my breast pocket, from which he took my
precious white rose and all the letters it con-
tained, among which was a paper of some
consequence to me.
My letters he glanced at. They were
plainly not what he wanted. My precious
rose, too, he laid aside with them. It was
evidently about the paper I have mentioned,
that he was concerned; for the moment he
opened it, he began with a pencil, in a small
pocket-book, to make rapid notes of its
COntentS.
This man seemed to glide through his
work with a noiseless and cool celerity which
argued, I thought, the training of the police-
department.
He re-arranged the papers, possibly in
the very order in which he had found them,
replaced them in my breast-pocket, and was
gone.


94. IN A GLASS DARKLY.
His visit, I think, did not quite last three
minutes. Very soon after his disappearance,
I heard the voice of the Marquis once more.
He got in, and I saw him look at me, and
smile, half envying me, I fancied, my sound
repose. If he had but known all!
He resumed his reading and docketing,
by the light of the little lamp which had
just subserved the purposes of a spy.
We were now out of the town, pursuing
our journey at the same moderate pace. We
had left the scene of my police visit, as I
should have termed it, now two leagues
behind us, when I suddenly felt a strange
throbbing in one ear, and a sensation as if
air passed through it into my throat. It
seemed as if a bubble of air, formed deep
in my ear, swelled, and burst there. The
indescribable tension of my brain seemed
all at once to give way; there was an odd
humming in my head, and a sort of vibra-


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 95
tion through every nerve of my body, such
as I have experienced in a limb that has
been, in popular phraseology, asleep. I
uttered a cry and half rose from my seat,
and then fell back trembling, and with a
sense of mortal faintness.
The Marquis stared at me, took my hand,
and earnestly asked if I was ill. I could
answer only with a deep groan.
Gradually the process of restoration was
completed; and I was able, though very
faintly, to tell him how very ill I had been ;
and then to describe the violation of my
letters, during the time of his absence from
the carriage.
“Good heaven l’’ he exclaimed, “the
miscreant did not get at my dispatch-box?”
I satisfied him, so far as I had observed,
on that point. He placed the box on the
seat beside him, and opened and examined
its contents very minutely.


96 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
“Yes, undisturbed; all safe, thank hea-
ven l’’ he murmured. “There are half-a-
dozen letters here, that I would not have
some people read, for a great deal.”
He now asked with a very kind anxiety
all about the illness I complained of. When
he had heard me, he said—
“A friend of mine once had an attack as
like yours as possible. It was on board-ship,
and followed a state of high excitement. He
was a brave man like you; and was called
on to exert both his strength and his courage
suddenly. An hour or two after, fatigue
overpowered him, and he appeared to fall
into a sound sleep. He really sank into a
state which he afterwards described so, that
I think it must have been precisely the same
affection as yours.”
“I am happy to think that my attack was
not unique. Did he ever experience a re-
turn of it.”


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 97
“I knew him for years after, and never
heard of any such thing. What strikes me
is a parallel in the predisposing causes of
each attack. Your unexpected, and gallant
hand-to-hand encounter, at such desperate
odds, with an experienced swordsman, like
that insane colonel of dragoons, your fatigue,
and, finally, your composing yourself, as
my other friend did, to sleep.”
“I wish,” he resumed, “one could make
out who that coquin was, who examined your
letters. It is not worth turning back,
however, because we should learn nothing.
Those people always manage so adroitly. I
am satisfied, however, that he must have
been an agent of the police. A rogue of
any other kind would have robbed you.”
I talked very little, being ill and exhausted,
but the Marquis talked on agreeably.
“We grow so intimate,” said he, at last,
“that I must remind you that I am not, for
VOL, II H


- THE DRAGON VOLANT. 99
The nearer we got to Paris, the more I
valued his protection. The countenance of
a great man on the spot, just then, taking so
kind an interest in the stranger whom he
had, as it were, blundered upon, might make
my visit ever so many degrees more delight-
ful than I had anticipated.
Nothing could be more gracious than the
manner and looks of the Marquis; and, as
I still thanked him, the carriage suddenly
stopped in front of the place where a relay
of horses awaited us, and where, as it turned
out, we were to part.


CHAPTER IX.
GOSSI P AND COUNSEL.
Y eventful journey was over, at last.
| I sat in my hotel window looking
out upon brilliant Paris, which had, in a
moment, recovered all its gaiety, and more
than its accustomed bustle. Every one has
read of the kind of excitement that followed
the catastrophe of Napoleon, and the second
restoration of the Bourbons. I need not,
therefore, even if, at this distance, I could,
recall and describe my experiences and im-


THE DRAGON VOLANT. IOI
pressions of the peculiar aspect of Paris, in
those strange times. It was, to be sure, my
first visit. But, often as I have seen it
since, I don’t think I ever saw that delightful
capital in a state, pleasurably, so excited
and exciting.
I had been two days in Paris, and had
seen all sorts of sights, and experienced none
of that rudeness and insolence of which
others complained, from the exasperated
officers of the defeated French army.
I must say this, also. My romance had
taken complete possession of me; and the
chance of seeing the object of my dream,
gave a secret and delightful interest to my
rambles and drives in the streets and en-
virons, and my visits to the galleries and
other sights of the metropolis.
I had neither seen nor heard of Count or
Countess, nor had the Marquis d'Harmon-
ville made any sign. I had quite recovered


I O2, IN A GLASS DARKLY.
the strange indisposition under which I had
suffered during my night journey.
It was now evening, and I was beginning
to fear that my patrician acquaintance had
quite forgotten me, when the waiter pre-
sented me the card of ‘Monsieur Droqville;’
and, with no small elation and hurry, I
desired him to show the gentleman up.
In came the Marquis d'Harmonville, kind
and gracious as ever.
“I am a night-bird at present,” said he,
so soon as we had exchanged the little
speeches which are usual. “I keep in the
shade, during the daytime, and even now I
hardly ventured to come in a close carriage.
The friends for whom I have undertaken a
rather critical service, have so ordained it.
They think all is lost, if I am known to be
in Paris. First let me present you with
these orders for my box. I am so vexed
that I cannot command it oftener during the


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 103
next fortnight; during my absence, I had
directed my secretary to give it for any night
to the first of my friends who might apply,
and the result is, that I find next to nothing
left at my disposal.” *
I thanked him very much.
“And now, a word, in my office of Men-
tor. You have not come here, of course,
without introductions?”
I produced half-a-dozen letters, the ad-
dresses of which he looked at.
“Don’t mind these letters,” he said. “I
will introduce you. I will take you myself
from house to house. One friend at your
side is worth many letters. Make no inti-
macies, no acquaintances, until then. You
young men like best to exhaust the public
amusements of a great city, before embar-
rassing yourself with the engagements of
society. Go to all these. It will occupy
you, day and night, for at least three weeks.


I o4. IN A GLASS DARKLY.
When this is over, I shall be at liberty, and
will myself introduce you to the brilliant but
comparatively quiet routine of society. Place
yourself in my hands; and in Paris remem-
ber, when once in society, you are always
there.”
I thanked him very much, and promised to
follow his counsels implicitly.
He seemed pleased, and said—
“I shall now tell you some of the places
you ought to go to. Take your map, and
write letters or numbers upon the points I
will indicate, and we will make out a little
list. All the places that I shall mention to
you are worth seeing.”
In this methodical way, and with a great
deal of amusing and scandalous anecdote, he
furnished me with a catalogue and a guide,
which, to a seeker of novelty and pleasure,
was invaluable.
“In a fortnight, perhaps in a week,” he


106 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
in the city, as preparations would, no doubt,
be necessary, after so long an absence, for
their reception at home.
“How long have they been away?”
“About eight months, I think.”
“They are poor, I think you said?”
“What you would consider poor. But,
Monsieur, the Count has an income which
affords them the comforts, and even the ele-
gancies of life, living as they do, in a very
quiet and retired way, in this cheap coun-
try.”
“Then they are very happy?”
“One would say they ought to be happy.”
“And what prevents?”
“He is jealous.”
“But his wife—she gives him no cause 2"
“I am afraid she does.”
“How, Monsieur?”
“I always thought she was a little too—a
great deal too—”


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 107
“Too what, Monsieur P”
“Too handsome. But although she has
remarkably fine eyes, exquisite features, and
the most delicate complexion in the world, I
believe that she is a woman of probity. You
have never seen her?” -
“There was a lady, muffled up in a cloak,
with a very thick veil on, the other night, in
the hall of the Belle Etoile, when I broke
that fellow's head who was bullying the old
Count. But her veil was so thick I could
not see a feature through it.” My answer
was diplomatic, you observe. “She may
have been the Count's daughter. Do they
quarrel ?”
“Who, he and his wife?”
“Yes.”
“A little.”
“Oh ! and what do they quarrel about?”
“It is a long story; about the lady's
diamonds. They are valuable—they are


IoS IN A GLASS DARKLY.
worth, La Perelleuse says, about a million of
francs. The Count wishes them sold and
turned into revenue, which he offers to settle
as she pleases. The Countess, whose they
are, resists, and for a reason which, I rather
think, she can’t disclose to him.”
“And pray what is that?” I asked, my
curiosity a good deal piqued.
“She is thinking, I conjecture, how well
she will look in them when she marries her
second husband.”
“Oh P—yes, to be sure. But the Count
de St. Alyre is a good man?”
“Admirable, and extremely intelligent.”
“I should wish so much to be presented
to the Count: you tell me he's so—”
“So agreeably married. But they are
living quite out of the world. He takes her
now and then to the Opera, or to a public
entertainment; but that is all.”
“And he must remember so much of the


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 109
old régime, and so many of the scenes of the
revolution l’
“Yes, the very man for a philosopher,
like you! And he falls asleep after dinner;
and his wife don’t. But, seriously, he has
retired from the gay and the great world, and
has grown apathetic; and so has his wife;
and nothing seems to interest her now, not
even—her husband l’”
The Marquis stood up to take his leave.
“Don’t risk your money,” said he. “You
will soon have an opportunity of laying out
some of it to great advantage. Several col-
lections of really good pictures, belonging
to persons who have mixed themselves up in
this Bonapartist restoration, must come
within a few weeks to the hammer. You
can do wonders when these sales commence.
There will be startling bargains ! Reserve
yourself for them. I shall let you know all
about it. By-the-by,” he said, stopping short


I IO IN A GLASS DARKLY.
as he approached the door, “I was so near
forgetting. There is to be, next week, the
very thing you would enjoy so much, be-
cause you see so little of it in England—I
mean a bal masqué, conducted, it is said,
with more than usual splendour. It takes
place at Versailles—all the world will be
there; there is such a rush for cards ! But I
think I may promise you one. Good-night !
Adieu !”


CHAPTER X.
T H E B L A C K V E I L.
PEAKING the language fluently and
with unlimited money, there was no-
thing to prevent my enjoying all that was
enjoyable in the French capital. You may
easily suppose how two days were passed.
At the end of that time, and at about the
same hour, Monsieur Droqville called again.
Courtly, good-natured, gay, as usual, he
told me that the masquerade ball was fixed
for the next Wednesday, and that he had ap-
plied for a card for me.


i I 2 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
How awfully unlucky. I was so afraid I
should not be able to go.
He stared at me for a moment with a sus-
picious and menacing look which I did not
understand, in silence, and then inquired,
rather sharply,
“And will Monsieur Beckett be good
enough to say, why not?”
I was a little surprised, but answered the
simple truth: I had made an engagement
for that evening with two or three Eng-
lish friends, and did not see how I
could.
“Just so ! You English, wherever you
are, always look out for your English boors,
your beer and “bifstek; and when you come
here, instead of trying to learn something of
the people you visit, and pretend to study,
you are guzzling, and swearing, and smoking
with one another, and no wiser or more
polished at the end of your travels than if


THE DRAGON VOLANT. II 3
you had been all the time carousing in a
booth at Greenwich.”
He laughed sarcastically, and looked as if
he could have poisoned me.
“There it is,” said he, throwing the card
on the table. “Take it or leave it, just as
you please. I suppose I shall have my
trouble for my pains; but it is not usual
when a man, such as I, takes trouble, asks a
favour, and secures a privilege for an ac-
quaintance, to treat him so.”
This was astonishingly impertinent!
I was shocked, offended, penitent. I had
possibly committed unwittingly a breach of
good-breeding, according to French ideas,
which almost justified the brusque severity of
the Marquis's undignified rebuke.
In a confusion, therefore, of many feelings,
I hastened to make my apologies, and to pro-
pitiate the chance friend who had showed me
so much disinterested kindness.
VOL. II. I


II.4. IN A GLASS DARKLY.
I told him that I would, at any cost, break
through the engagement in which I had un-
luckily entangled myself; that I had spoken
with too little reflection, and that I certainly
had not thanked him at all in proportion to
his kindness and to my real estimate of it.
“Pray say not a word more; my vexation
was entirely on your account; and I ex-
pressed it, I am only too conscious, in terms
a great deal too strong, which, I am sure,
your goodnature will pardon. Those who
know me a little better are aware that I
sometimes say a good deal more than I
intend ; and am always sorry when I do.
Monsieur Beckett will forget that his old
friend, Monsieur Droqville, has lost his
temper in his cause, for a moment, and—
we are as good friends as before.”
He smiled like the Monsieur Droqville
of the Belle Etoile, and extended his hand,
which I took very respectfully and cordially.
/


THE DRAGON VOLANT. II 5
Our momentary quarrel had left us only
better friends.
The Marquis then told me I had better
secure a bed in some hotel at Versailles, as
a rush would be made to take them; and
advised my going down next morning for
the purpose. -
I ordered horses accordingly for eleven
o'clock; and, after a little more conversa-
tion, the Marquis d'Harmonville bid me
good-night, and ran down the stairs with his
handkerchief to his mouth and nose, and,
as I saw from my window, jumped into his
close carriage again and drove away.
Next day I was at Versailles. As I ap-
proached the door of the Hotel de France, it
WaS plain that I was not a moment too soon,
if, indeed, I were not already too late.
A crowd of carriages were drawn up about
the entrance, so that I had no chance of ap-
proaching except by dismounting and push-
..I 2


I 16 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
ing my way among the horses. The hall
was full of servants and gentlemen screaming
to the proprietor, who, in a state of polite
distraction, was assuring them, one and all,
that there was not a room or a closet disen-
gaged in his entire house.
I slipped out again, leaving the hall to
those who were shouting, expostulating,
wheedling, in the delusion that the host
might, if he pleased, manage something for
them. I jumped into my carriage and drove,
at my horses' best pace, to the Hotel du
Reservoir. The blockade about this door
was as complete as the other. The result
was the same. It was very provoking, but
what was to be done? My postillion had,
a little officiously, while I was in the hall
talking with the hotel authorities, got his
horses, bit by bit, as other carriages moved
away, to the very steps of the inn door.
This arrangement was very convenient so


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 117
far as getting in again was concerned. But,
this accomplished, how were we to get on ?
There were carriages in front, and carriages
behind, and no less than four rows of car-
riages, of all sorts, outside.
I had at this time remarkably long and
clear sight, and if I had been impatient
before, guess what my feelings were when I
saw an open carriage pass along the narrow
strip of roadway left open at the other side,
a barouche in which I was certain I recog-
nized the veiled Countess and her husband.
This carriage had been brought to a walk by
a cart which occupied the whole breadth of
the narrow way, and was moving with the
customary tardiness of such vehicles.
I should have done more wisely if I had
jumped down on the trottoir, and run round
the block of carriages in front of the ba-
rouche. But, unfortunately, I was more of
a Murat than a Moltke, and preferred a


118 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
direct charge upon my object to relying on
tactique. I dashed across the back seat of a
: carriage which was next mine, I don't know
how; tumbled through a sort of gig, in
which an old gentleman and a dog were
dozing; stepped with an incoherent apology
over the side of an open carriage, in which
were four gentlemen engaged in a hot dis-
pute; tripped at the far side in getting out,
and fell flat across the backs of a pair of
horses, who instantly began plunging and
threw me head foremost in the dust.
To those who observed my reckless charge
without being in the secret of my object I :
must have appeared demented. Fortunately,
the interesting barouche had passed before
the catastrophe, and covered as I was with
dust, and my hat blocked, you may be sure
I did not care to present myself before the
object of my Quixotic devotion.
I stood for a while amid a storm of sacré-


THE DRAGON VOLANT. I 19
ing, tempered disagreeably with laughter; .
and in the midst of these, while endeavouring
to beat the dust from my clothes with my
handkerchief, I heard a voice with which I
was acquainted call, “Monsieur Beckett.”
I looked and saw the Marquis peeping
from a carriage-window. It was a welcome
sight. In a moment I was at his carriage
side.
“You may as well leave Versailles,” he
said; “you have learned, no doubt, that
there is not a bed to hire in either of the
hotels; and I can add that there is not a
room to let in the whole town. But I have
managed something for you that will answer
just as well. Tell your servant to follow us,
and get in here and sit beside me.”
Fortunately an opening in the closely-
packed carriages had just occurred, and mine
was approaching.
I directed the servant to follow us; and


I 2 O IN A GLASS DARKLY.
the Marquis having said a word to his driver,
we were immediately in motion.
“I will bring you to a comfortable place,
the very existence of which is known to but
few Parisians, where, knowing how things
were here, I secured a room for you. It is
only a mile away, and an old comfortable
inn, called Le Dragon Volant. It was fortu-
nate for you that my tiresome business called
me to this place so early.”
I think we had driven about a mile-and-a-
half to the further side of the palace when we
found ourselves upon a narrow old road,
with the woods of Versailles on one side,
and much older trees, of a size seldom seen
in France, on the other.
We pulled up before an antique and solid
inn, built of Caen stone, in a fashion richer
and more florid than was ever usual in such
houses, and which indicated that it was
originally designed for the private mansion


THE DRAGON VOLANT. I2, I
of some person of wealth, and probably, as
the wall bore many carved shields and sup-
porters, of distinction also. A kind of porch,
less ancient than the rest, projected hospitably
with a wide and florid arch, over which, cut
in high relief in stone, and painted and
gilded, was the sign of the inn. This was
the Flying Dragon, with wings of brilliant
red and gold, expanded, and its tail, pale
green and gold, twisted and knotted into
ever so many rings, and ending in a burnished
point barbed like the dart of death.
“I shan’t go in—but you will find it a
comfortable place; at all events better than
nothing. I would go in with you, but my
incognito forbids. You will, I daresay, be
all the better pleased to learn that the inn is
haunted—I should have been, in my young
days, I know. But don’t allude to that
awful fact in hearing of your host, for I
believe it is a sore subject. Adieu. If you


I 22, IN A GLASS DARKLY.
want to enjoy yourself at the ball take my
advice, and go in a domino. I think I shall
look in; and certainly, if I do, in the same
costume. How shall we recognize one
another? Let me see, something held in the
fingers—a flower won't do, so many people
will have flowers. Suppose you get a red
cross a couple of inches long—you're an
Englishman—stitched or pinned on the breast
of your domino, and I a white one? Yes,
that will do very well; and whatever room
you go into keep near the door till we meet.
I shall look for you at all the doors I pass;
and you, in the same way, for me; and we
must find each other soon. So that is under-
stood. I can’t enjoy a thing of that kind
with any but a young person; a man of my
age requires the contagion of young spirits
and the companionship of some one who
enjoys everything spontaneously. Farewell;
we meet to-night.”


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 123
By this time I was standing on the road; I
shut the carriage-door; bid him good-bye;
and away he drove.


CHAPTER XI.
THE DRAGON VOLANT.
TOOK one look about me.
The building was picturesque; the
trees made it more so. The antique and
sequestered character of the scene, contrasted
strangely with the glare and bustle of the
Parisian life, to which my eye and ear had
become accustomed.
Then I examined the gorgeous old sign for
a minute or two. Next I surveyed the
exterior of the house more carefully. It was
large and solid, and squared more with my
| w/


THE DRAGON VOLANT. I 25
ideas of an ancient English hostelrie, such as
the Canterbury pilgrims might have put up
at, than a French house of entertainment.
Except, indeed, for a round turret, that rose
at the left flank of the house, and terminated
in the extinguisher-shaped roof that suggests
a French château.
I entered and announced myself as Mon-
sieur Beckett, for whom a room had been
taken. I was received with all the considera–
tion due to an English milord, with, of
course, an unfathomable purse.
My host conducted me to my apartment.
It was a large room, a little sombre, panelled
with dark wainscoting, and furnished in a
stately and sombre style, long out of date.
There was a wide hearth, and a heavy
mantelpiece, carved with shields, in which I
might, had I been curious enough, have dis-
covered a correspondence with the heraldry
on the outer walls. There was something


I 26 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
interesting, melancholy, and even depressing
in all this. I went to the stone-shafted
window, and looked out upon a small park,
with a thick wood, forming the background
of a château, which presented a cluster of
such conical-topped turrets as I have just
now mentioned.
The wood and château were melancholy
objects. They showed signs of neglect, and
almost of decay; and the gloom of fallen
grandeur, and a certain air of desertion hung
oppressively over the scene.
I asked my host the name of the château.
“That, Monsieur, is the Château de la
Carque,” he answered.
“It is a pity it is so neglected,” I observed.
“I should say, perhaps, a pity that its pro-
prietor is not more wealthy?”
“Perhaps so, Monsieur.”
“Perhaps?”—I repeated, and looked at him.
“Then I suppose he is not very popular.”


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 127
“Neither one thing nor the other, Mon-
sieur,” he answered; “I meant only that we
could not tell what use he might make of
riches.”
“And who is he?” I inquired.
“The Count de St. Alyre.”
“Oh ! The Count! You are quite sure?”
I asked, very eagerly. -
It was now the innkeeper's turn to look at
Ine.
“Quite sure, Monsieur, the Count de St.
Alyre.”
“Do you see much of him in this part of
the world?”
“Not a great deal, Monsieur; he is often
absent for a considerable time.”
“And is he poor?” I inquired.
“I pay rent to him for this house. It is
not much; but I find he cannot wait long
for it,” he replied, smiling satirically.
“From what I have heard, however, I


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 129
“Yes; but I fancy we may say something
more? She has attributes?”
“Three, Monsieur, three, at least most
amiable.”
“Ah! And what are they?”
“Youth, beauty, and—diamonds.”
I laughed. The sly old gentleman was
foiling my curiosity.
“I see, my friend,” said I, “you are re-
luctant—”
“To quarrel with the Count,” he con-
cluded. “True. You see, Monsieur, he
could vex me in two or three ways;
so could I him. But, on the whole, it
is better each to mind his business, and
to maintain peaceful relations; you under-
stand.”
It was, therefore, no use trying, at least
for the present. Perhaps he had nothing to
relate. Should I think differently, by-and-by,
VOL. II. - K


I 30 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
I could try the effect of a few Napoleons.
Possibly he meant to extract them.
The host of the Dragon Volant was an
elderly man, thin, bronzed, intelligent, and
with an air of decision, perfectly military. I
learned afterwards that he had served under
Napoleon in his early Italian campaigns.
“One question, I think you may answer,”
I said, “without risking a quarrel. Is the
Count at home P”
“He has many homes, I conjecture,” said
the host evasively. “But—but I think I
may say, Monsieur, that he is, I believe,
at present staying at the Château de la -
Carque.”
I looked out of the window, more in-
terested than ever, across the undulating
grounds to the château, with its gloomy
background of foliage.
“I saw him to-day, in his carriage at Ver-
sailles,” I said.


THE DRAGON VOLANT. I 31
“Very natural.”
“Then his carriage and horses and ser-
vants are at the château?”
“The carriage he puts up here, Mon-
sieur, and the servants are hired for the
occasion. There is but one who sleeps at the
château. Such a life must be terrifying for
Madame the Countess,” he replied.
“The old screw !” I thought. “By this
torture, he hopes to extract her diamonds.
What a life What fiends to contend with
—jealousy and extortion "
The knight having made this speech to
himself, cast his eyes once more upon the
enchanter's castle, and heaved a gentle sigh—
a sigh of longing, of resolution, and of love.
What a fool I was! and yet, in the sight
of angels, are we any wiser as we grow older?
It seems to me, only, that our illusions change
as we go on; but, still, we are madmen all
the same.


I 32. IN A GLASS DARKLY.
“Well, St. Clair,” said I, as my servant
entered, and began to arrange my things.
“You have got a bed ?”
“In the cock-loft, Monsieur, among the
spiders, and, par ma foil the cats and the
owls. But we agree very well. Vive la
bagatelle !”
“I had no idea it was so full.”
“Chiefly the servants, Monsieur, of those
persons who were fortunate enough to get
apartments at Versailles.”
“And what do you think of the Dragon
Volant?”
“The Dragon Volant! Monsieur; the old
fiery dragon The devil himself, if all is
true ! On the faith of a Christian, Monsieur,
they say that diabolical miracles have taken
place in this house.”
“What do you mean? Revenants?”
“Not at all, sir; I wish it was no worse.
Revenants 2 No! People who have never


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 133
returned—who vanished, before the eyes of
half-a-dozen men, all looking at them.”
“What do you mean, St. Clair? Let us
hear the story, or miracle, or whatever it is.”
“It is only this, Monsieur, that an ex-
master-of-the-horse of the late king, who lost
his head—Monsieur will have the goodness
to recollect, in the revolution—being per-
mitted by the Emperor to return to France,
lived here in this hotel, for a month, and at
the end of that time vanished, visibly, as I
told you, before the faces of half-a-dozen
credible witnesses! The other was a Russian
nobleman, six feet high and upwards, who,
standing in the centre of the room, down-
stairs, describing to seven gentlemen of un-
questionable veracity, the last moments of
Peter the Great, and having a glass of eau de
vie in his left hand, and his tassé de café,
nearly finished, in his right, in like manner
vanished. His boots were found on the floor


I 34. IN A GLASS DARKLY.
where he had been standing; and the gentle-
man at his right, found, to his astonishment,
his cup of coffee in his fingers, and the gentle-
> *
man at his left, his glass of eau de vie
“Which he swallowed in his confusion,” I
suggested.
“Which was preserved for three years
among the curious articles of this house, and
was broken by the curé while conversing with
Mademoiselle Fidone in the housekeeper's
room; but of the Russian nobleman himself,
nothing more was ever seen or heard |
Parbleu ! when we go out of the Dragon
Volant, I hope it may be by the door. I
heard all this, Monsieur, from the postillion
who drove us.”
“Then it must be true!” said I, jocularly:
but I was beginning to feel the gloom of the
view, and of the chamber in which I stood;
there had stolen over me, I know not how, a
presentiment of evil; and my joke was with
an effort, and my spirit flagged.


CHAPTER XII.
T H E M A G I C I A N.
O more brilliant spectacle than this
masked ball could be imagined.
Among other salons and galleries, thrown
open, was the enormous perspective of the
“Grande Galerie des Glaces,” lighted up on
that occasion with no less than four thousand
wax candles, reflected and repeated by all
the mirrors, so that the effect was almost
dazzling. The grand suite of salons was
thronged with masques, in every conceivable
costume. There was not a single room de-
- * *


136 - IN A GLASS DARKLY.
serted. Every place was animated with
music, voices, brilliant colours, flashing jewels,
the hilarity of extemporized comedy, and all
the spirited incidents of a cleverly sustained
masquerade. I had never seen before any-
thing, in the least, comparable to this magni-
ficent féte. I moved along, indolently, in my
domino and mask, loitering, now and then,
to enjoy a clever dialogue, a farcical song, or
an amusing monologue, but, at the same
time, keeping my eyes about me, lest my
friend in the black domino, with the little
white cross on his breast, should pass me by.
I had delayed and looked about me, spe-
cially, at every door I passed, as the Marquis
and I had agreed; but he had not yet ap-
peared.
While I was thus employed, in the very
luxury of lazy amusement, I saw a gilded
sedan chair, or, rather, a Chinese palanquin,
exhibiting the fantastic exuberance of “Ce-


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 137
lestial” decoration, borne forward on gilded
poles by four richly-dressed Chinese; one
with a wand in his hand marched in front,
and another behind; and a slight and solemn
man, with a long black beard, a tall fez, such
as a dervish is represented as wearing, walked
close to its side. A strangely-embroidered
robe fell over his shoulders, covered with
hieroglyphic symbols; the embroidery was in
black and gold, upon a variegated ground of
brilliant colours. The robe was bound about
his waist with a broad belt of gold, with
cabalistic devices traced on it, in dark red
and black; red stockings, and shoes em-
broidered with gold, and pointed and curved
upward at the toes, in Oriental fashion, ap-
peared below the skirt of the robe. The
man's face was dark, fixed, and solemn, and
his eyebrows black, and enormously heavy—
he carried a singular-looking book under his
arm, a wand of polished black wood in his


138 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
other hand, and walked with his chin sunk
on his breast, and his eyes fixed upon the
floor. The man in front waved his wand
right and left to clear the way for the advanc-
ing palanquin, the curtains of which were
closed; and there was something so singular,
strange, and solemn about the whole thing,
that I felt at once interested.
I was very well pleased when I saw the
bearers set down their burthen within a few
yards of the spot on which I stood.
The bearers and the men with the gilded
wands forthwith clapped their hands, and in
silence danced round the palanquin a curious
and half frantic dance, which was yet, as to
figures and postures, perfectly methodical.
This was soon accompanied by a clapping of
hands and a ha-ha-ing, rhythmically deli-
vered.
While the dance was going on a hand was
lightly laid on my arm, and, looking round,


THE DRAGON VOLANT. I 39
a black domino with a white cross stood
beside me.
“I am so glad I have found you,” said the
Marquis; “and at this moment. This is
the best group in the rooms. You must
speak to the wizard. About an hour ago
I lighted upon them, in another salon, and
consulted the oracle, by putting questions.
I never was more amazed. Although his
answers were a little disguised it was soon
perfectly plain that he knew every detail
about the business, which no one on earth
had heard of but myself, and two or three
other men, about the most cautious persons
in France. I shall never forget that shock.
I saw other people who consulted him,
evidently as much surprised, and more
frightened than I. I came with the Count
St. Alyre and the Countess.”
He nodded toward a thin figure, also in a
domino. It was the Count.


I4o IN A GLASS DARKLY.
“Come,” he said to me, “I’ll introduce
you.”
I followed, you may suppose, readily
enough.
The Marquis presented me, with a very
prettily-turned allusion to my fortunate inter-
vention in his favour at the Belle Etoile;
and the Count overwhelmed me with polite
speeches, and ended by saying, what pleased
me better still:
“The Countess is near us, in the next
salon but one, chatting with her old friend
the Duchesse d'Argensaque; I shall go for
her in a few minutes; and when I bring her
here, she shall make your acquaintance; and
thank you, also, for your assistance, ren-
dered with so much courage when we were
so very disagreeably interrupted.”
“You must, positively, speak with the
magician,” said the Marquis to the Count de
St. Alyre, “you will be so much amused. I


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 14 I
did so; and, I assure you, I could not have
anticipated such answers! I don’t know what
to believe.”
“Really Then, by all means, let us try,”
he replied.
We three approached, together, the side of
the palanquin, at which the black-bearded
magician stood.
A young man, in a Spanish dress, who,
with a friend at his side, had just conferred
with the conjuror, was saying, as he passed
us by:
“Ingenious mystification | Who is that in
the palanquin. He seems to know every-
body 1"
The Count, in his mask and domino,
moved along, stiffly, with us, toward the
palanquin. A clear circle was maintained by
the Chinese attendants, and the spectators
crowded round in a ring.
One of these men—he who with a gilded


THE DRAGON VOLANT. I43
drew his head, and closed the curtain again;
and then answered—
“Yes.”
The same preliminary was observed each
time, so that the man with the black wand
presented himself, not as a prophet, but as a
medium; and answered, as it seemed, in the
words of a greater than himself.
Two or three questions followed, the
answers to which seemed to amuse the
Marquis very much ; but the point of which
I could not see, for I knew next to nothing
of the Count's peculiarities and adven-
tureS. -
“Does my wife love me?” asked he, play-
fully.
“As well as you deserve.”
“Whom do I love best in the world?”
“Self.” -
“Oh! That I fancy is pretty much the
case with every one. But, putting myself


I44. IN A GLASS DARKLY.
out of the question, do I love anything on
earth better than my wife?”
“Her diamonds.”
“Oh !” said the Count.
The Marquis, I could see, laughed.
“Is it true,” said the Count, changing the
conversation peremptorily, “that there has
been a battle in Naples?”
“No; in France.”
“Indeed,” said the Count, satirically, with
a glance round. “And may I inquire be-
tween what powers, and on what particular
quarrel?”
“Between the Count and Countess de St.
Alyre, and about a document they subscribed
on the 25th July, 1811.”
The Marquis afterwards told me that this
was the date of their marriage settlement.
The Count stood stock-still for a minute
or so; and one could fancy that they saw his
face flushing through his mask.


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 14.5
Nobody, but we two, knew that the in-
quirer was the Count de St. Alyre.
I thought he was puzzled to find a subject
for his next question; and, perhaps, repented
having entangled himself in such a colloquy.
If so, he was relieved; for the Marquis,
touching his arm, whispered—
“Look to your right, and see who is
coming.”
I looked in the direction indicated by the
Marquis, and I saw a gaunt figure stalking
toward us. It was not a masque. The face
was broad, scarred, and white. In a word,
it was the ugly face of Colonel Gaillarde,
who, in the costume of a corporal of the
Imperial Guard, with his left arm so adjusted
as to look like a stump, leaving the lower
part of the coat-sleeve empty, and pinned up
to the breast. There were strips of very
real sticking-plaster across his eyebrow and
VOL. II. L


146 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
temple, where my stick had left its mark, to
score, hereafter, among the more honourable
scars of war.


CHAPTER XIII.
THE ORACLE TELLS ME WONDERS.
FORGOT for a moment how impervious
my mask and domino were to the hard
stare of the old campaigner, and was prepar-
ing for an animated scuffle. It was only for
a moment, of course; but the Count cau-
tiously drew a little back as the gasconading
corporal, in blue uniform, white vest, and
white gaiters – for my friend Gaillarde
was as loud and swaggering in his as-
sumed character as in his real one of a

L 2


148 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
colonel of dragoons—drew near. He had
already twice all but got himself turned out of
doors for vaunting the exploits of Napoleon
le Grand, in terrific mock-heroics, and had
very nearly come to hand-grips with a Prus-
sian hussar. In fact, he would have been in-
volved in several sanguinary rows already,
had not his discretion reminded him that the –,
object of his coming there at all, namely, to
arrange a meeting with an affluent widow,
on whom he believed he had made a tender
impression, would not have been promoted
by his premature removal from the festive
scene, of which he was an ornament, in charge
of a couple of gendarmes.
“Money! Gold | Bah! What money can
a wounded soldier like your humble servant
have amassed, with but his sword-hand
left, which, being necessarily occupied, places
not a finger at his command with which to
scrape together the spoils of a routed enemy?”


15o IN A GLASS DARKLY.
head. They are each separately too strong for
you ; take care your pursuit does not unite
them.”
“Bah! How could that be P”
“The Englishman protects ladies. He has
got that fact into your head. The widow, if
she sees, will marry him. It takes some time,
she will reflect, to become a colonel, and the
Englishman is unquestionably young.”
“I will cut his cock's-comb for him,” he
ejaculated with an oath and a grin ; and in a
softer tone he asked, “Where is she ”
“Near enough to be offended if you fail.”
“So she ought, by my faith. You are
right, Monsieur le prophète | A hundred
thousand thanks! Farewell!” And staring
about him, and stretching his lank neck as
high as he could, he strode away with his
scars, and white waistcoat and gaiters, and his
bearskin shako.
I had been trying to see the person who


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 151
sat in the palanquin. I had only once an
opportunity of a tolerably steady peep.
What I saw was singular. The oracle was
dressed, as I have said, very richly, in the
Chinese fashion. He was a figure alto-
gether on a larger scale than the interpreter,
who stood outside. The features seemed to
me large and heavy, and the head was carried
with a downward inclination the eyes were
closed, and the chin rested on the breast of
his embroidered pelisse. The face seemed
fixed, and the very image of apathy. Its
character and pose seemed an exaggerated
repetition of the immobility of the figure
who communicated with the noisy outer
world. This face looked blood-red; but
that was caused, I concluded, by the light
entering through the red silk curtains. All
this struck me almost at a glance; I had not
many seconds in which to make my observa-
tion. The ground was now clear, and the


I 52 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
Marquis said, “Go forward, my friend.”
I did so. When I reached the magician,
as we called the man with the black wand, I
glanced over my shoulder to see whether the
Count was near.
No, he was some yards behind; and he
and the Marquis, whose curiosity seemed to
be, by this time, satisfied, were now con-
versing generally upon some subject of course
quite different.
I was relieved, for the sage seemed to
blurt out secrets in an unexpected way; and
some of mine might not have amused the
Count. - -
I thought for a moment. I wished to test
the prophet. A Church-of-England man
was a rara avis in Paris.
“What is my religion ?” I asked.
“A beautiful heresy,” answered the oracle
instantly.
“A heresy 2–and pray how is it named?”


THE DRAGON VOLANT. I 53
“Love.”
“Oh! Then I suppose I am a polytheist,
and love a great many?”
“One.”
“But, seriously,” I asked, intending to
turn the course of our colloquy a little out of
an embarrassing channel, “have I ever learned
any words of devotion by heart?”
“Yes.”
“Can you repeat them ’’’
“Approach.”
I did, and lowered my ear.
The man with the black wand closed the
curtains, and whispered, slowly and dis-
tinctly, these words, which, I need scarcely
tell you, I instantly recognized:
I may never see you more; and, oh / that I
could forget you ! go-farewell—for God’s sake,
go!
I started as I heard them. They were,


I 54 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
you know, the last words whispered to me
by the Countess.
Good Heaven How miraculous ! Words
heard, most assuredly, by no ear on earth
but my own and the lady's who uttered them,
till now !
I looked at the impassive face of the
spokesman with the wand. There was no
trace of meaning, or even of a consciousness
that the words he had uttered could possibly
interest me.
“What do I most long for ?” I asked,
scarcely knowing what I said.
“Paradise.”
“And what prevents my reaching it?”
“A black veil.”
Stronger and stronger! The answers
seemed to me to indicate the minutest ac-
quaintance with every detail of my little
romance, of which not even the Marquis
knew anything! And I, the questioner,


THE DRAGON VOLANT. I 55
masked and robed so that my own brother
could not have known me !
“You said I loved some one. Am I
loved in return?” I asked.
“Try.”
I was speaking lower than before, and
stood near the dark man with the beard, to
prevent the necessity of his speaking in a
loud key.
“Does any one love me?” I repeated.
>
“Secretly,” was the answer.
“Much or little?” I inquired.
“Too Well.”
“How long will that love last?”
“Till the rose casts its leaves.”
“The rose—another allusion 1"
“Then—darkness!” I sighed. “But till
then I live in light.”
“The light of violet eyes.”
Love, if not a religion, as the oracle had
just pronounced it, is, at least, a supersti-


156 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
tion. How it exalts the imagination How
it enervates the reason! How credulous it
makes us!
All this which, in the case of another, I
should have laughed at, most powerfully
affected me in my own. It inflamed my
ardour, and half crazed my brain, and even
influenced my conduct.
The spokesman of this wonderful trick—
if trick it were—now waved me backward
with his wand, and as I withdrew, my eyes
still fixed upon the group, by this time en-
circled with an aura of mystery in my fancy;
backing toward the ring of spectators, I saw
him raise his hand suddenly, with a gesture
of command, as a signal to the usher who
carried the golden wand in front.
The usher struck his wand on the ground,
and, in a shrill voice, proclaimed; “The
great Confu is silent for an hour.”
Instantly the bearers pulled down a sort


158 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
could judge by his attitude and musing. I
approached, and he said:
“The Count has just gone away to look
for his wife. It is a pity she was not here
to consult the prophet; it would have been
amusing, I daresay, to see how the Count
bore it. Suppose we follow him. I have
asked him to introduce you.”
With a beating heart, I accompanied the
Marquis d'Harmonville.


16o IN A GLASS DARKLY.
called the “Salon d'Apollon.” The paint-
ings remained in my memory, and my adven-
ture of that evening was destined to occur
there.
I sat down upon a sofa; and looked about
me. Three or four persons beside myself
were seated on this roomy piece of gilded
furniture. They were chatting all very
gaily; all—except the person who sat next
me, and she was a lady. Hardly two feet
interposed between us. The lady sat ap-
parently in a reverie. Nothing could be more
graceful. She wore the costume perpetuated
in Collignan's full-length portrait of Made-
moiselle de la Vallière. It is, as you know,
not only rich, but elegant. Her hair was
powdered, but one could perceive that it
was naturally a dark brown. One pretty
little foot appeared, and could anything be
more exquisite than her hand?
It was extremely provoking that this lady


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 161
wore her mask, and did not, as many did,
hold it for a time in her hand.
I was convinced that she was pretty.
Availing myself of the privilege of a mas-
querade, a microcosm in which it is impos-
sible, except by voice and allusion, to dis-
tinguish friend from foe, I spoke—
“It is not easy, Mademoiselle, to deceive
me,” I began.
“So much the better for Monsieur,” an-
swered the mask, quietly.
“I mean,” I said, determined to tell my
fib, “that beauty is a gift more difficult to
conceal than Mademoiselle supposes.”
“Yet Monsieur has succeeded very well,”
she said in the same sweet and careless
tOneS.
“I see the costume of this, the beautiful
Mademoiselle de la Vallière, upon a form
that surpasses her own; I raise my eyes, and
I behold a mask, and yet I recognise the
VOL. II M


162 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
lady; beauty is like that precious stone in
the ‘Arabian Nights, which emits, no
matter how concealed, a light that betrays it.”
“I know the story,” said the young lady.
“The light betrayed it, not in the sun, but
in darkness. Is there so little light in these
rooms, Monsieur, that a poor glowworm can
show so brightly. I thought we were in a
luminous atmosphere, wherever a certain
countess moved ?” -
Here was an awkward speech ! How was
I to answer? This lady might be, as they
say some ladies are, a lover of mischief, or
an intimate of the Countess de St. Alyre.
Cautiously, therefore, I inquired,
“What countess?”
“If you know me, you must know that
she is my dearest friend. Is she not beau-
ful ?”
“How can I answer, there are so many
countesses.”


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 163
“Every one who knows me, knows who
my best beloved friend is. You don’t know
me?”
“That is cruel. I can scarcely believe I
am mistaken.”
“With whom were you walking, just
now?” she asked.
“A gentleman, a friend,” I answered.
“I saw him, of course, a friend; but I
think I know him, and should like to be
certain. Is he not a certain marquis?”
Here was another question that was ex-
tremely awkward.
“There are so many people here, and one
may walk, at one time, with one, and at
another with a different one, that—”
“That an unscrupulous person has no
difficulty in evading a simple question like
mine. Know then, once for all, that nothing
disgusts a person of spirit so much as suspi-
cion. You, Monsieur, are a gentleman of
M 2.


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 165
pretend to mistake me for another. But who
is quite perfect? Is truth any longer to be
found on earth ?”
“Mademoiselle has formed a mistaken
opinion of me.”
“And you also of me; you find me less
foolish than you supposed. I know perfectly
whom you intend amusing with compli-
ments and melancholy declamation, and
whom, with that amiable purpose, you have
been seeking.”
“Tell me whom you mean,” I entreated.
“Upon one condition.”
“What is that ?”
“That you will confess if I name the
lady.”
“You describe my object unfairly.” I
objected. “I can't admit that I proposed
speaking to any lady in the tone you de-
scribe.”
“Well, I shan’t insist on that; only if I


166 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
name the lady, you will promise to admit
that I am right.”
“Must I promise?”
“Certainly not, there is no compulsion;
but your promise is the only condition on
which I will speak to you again.”
I hesitated for a moment; but how could
she possibly tell? The Countess would
scarcely have admitted this little romance to
any one; and the mask in the La Vallière
costume could not possibly know who the
masked domino beside her was.
“I consent,” I said, “I promise.”
“You must promise on the honour of a
gentleman.”
“Well, I do; on the honour of a gentle-
man.”
“Then this lady is the Countess de St.
Alyre.” I was unspeakably surprised; I was
disconcerted; but I remembered my promise,
and said—


168 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
“I told you that I am the Countess's
friend, and being so I must know something
of her character; also, there are confidences
between us, and I may know more than you
think, of those trifling services of which
you suppose the recollection is so transi-
tory.”
I was becoming more and more interested.
I was as wicked as other young men, and
the heinousness of such a pursuit was as
nothing, now that self-love and all the pas-
sions that mingle in such a romance, were
roused. The image of the beautiful Countess
had now again quite superseded the pretty
counterpart of La Vallière, who was before
me. I would have given a great deal to
hear, in solemn earnest, that she did remem-
ber the champion who, for her sake, had
thrown himself before the sabre of an en-
raged dragoon, with only a cudgel in his
hand, and conquered.


17o IN A GLASS DARKLY.
“That is better still. I need not ask if
you have courage for an adventure. I need
not ask if you are a man of honour. A lady
may trust herself to you, and fear nothing.
There are few men to whom the interview,
such as I shall arrange, could be granted
with safety. You shall meet her at two
o'clock this morning in the Park of the
Château de la Carque. What room do you
occupy in the Dragon Volant ’’’
I was amazed at the audacity and decision
of this girl. Was she, as we say in England,
hoaxing me?
“I can describe that accurately,” said I.
“As I look from the rear of the house, in
which my apartment is, I am at the extreme
right, next the angle ; and one pair of stairs
up, from the hall.”
“Very well; you must have observed, if
you looked into the park, two or three clumps
of chestnut and lime-trees, growing so close


172 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
does not speak, rather from her own sym-
pathy or goodness, than from a certainty
that the Countess de St. Alyre would concede
so great an honour?”
“Monsieur believes either that I am not,
as I pretend to be, in the secret which he
hitherto supposed to be shared by no one but
the Countess and himself, or else that I am
cruelly mystifying him. That I am in her
confidence, I swear by all that is dear in a
whispered farewell. By the last companion
of this flower!” and she took for a moment
in her fingers the nodding head of a white
rosebud that was nestled in her bouquet. “By
my own good star, and hers—or shall I call -
it our ‘belle étoile? Have I said enough?”
“Enough?” I repeated, “more than enough
— a thousand thanks.”
“And being thus in her confidence, I am
clearly her friend; and being a friend would
it be friendly to use her dear name so; and


THE DRAGON VOLAN. T. 173
all for sake of practising a vulgar trick upon
you—a stranger ?”
“Mademoiselle will forgive me. Remem-
ber how very precious is the hope of seeing,
and speaking to the Countess. Is it wonder-
ful, then, that I should falter in my belief?
You have convinced me, however, and will
forgive my hesitation.”
“You will be at the place I have des-
cribed, then, at two o'clock P”
“Assuredly,” I answered.
“And Monsieur, I know, will not fail,
through fear. No, he need not assure me;
his courage is already proved.”
“No danger, in such a case, will be un-
welcome to me.”
“Had you not better go now, Monsieur,
and rejoin your friend?”
“I promised to wait here for my friend's
return. The Count de St. Alyre said that
he intended to introduce me to the Countess.”


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 175
me that the Duchesse de la Roqueme had
changed her place, and taken the Countess
with her; but he hoped, at some very early
time, to have an opportunity of enabling her
to make my acquaintance.
I avoided the Marquis d'Harmonville, who
was following the Count. I was afraid he
might propose accompanying me home, and
had no wish to be forced to make an ex-
planation.
I lost myself quickly, therefore, in the
crowd, and moved, as rapidly as it would
allow me, toward the Galerie des Glaces,
which lay in the direction opposite to that in
which I saw the Count and my friend the
Marquis moving.


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 177
therefore, as I saw some other people do,
who were as careless of mystery as I. I had
hardly done so, and began to breathe more
comfortably, when I heard a friendly English
voice call me by my name. It was Tom
Whistlewick, of the –th Dragoons. He had
unmasked, with a very flushed face, as I did.
He was one of those Waterloo heroes, new
from the mint of glory, whom, as a body,
all the world, except France, revered; and
the only thing I knew against him, was a
habit of allaying his thirst, which was exces-
sive, at balls, fetes, musical parties, and all
gatherings, where it was to be had, with
champagne; and, as he introduced me to his
friend, Monsieur Carmaignac, I observed that
he spoke a little thick. Monsieur Carmaignac
was little, lean, and as straight as a ramrod.
He was bald, took snuff, and wore spec-
tacles; and, as I soon learned, held an official
position.
vol. II. - N


THE DRAGON VOLANT. I 81
relations of the people who had disappeared;
they had applied to the government to in-
vestigate the affair. We had letters from
the same relations more than two years later,
from which we learned that the missing men
had never turned up.” -
He took a pinch of snuff, and looked
steadily at me.
“Never! I shall relate all that happened,
so far as we could discover. The French
noble, who was the Chevalier Chateau Blasse-
mare, unlike most émigrés, had taken the
matter in time, sold a large portion of his
property before the revolution had proceeded
so far as to render that next to impossible,
and retired with a large sum. He brought
with him about half a million of francs, the
greater part of which he invested in the
French funds; a much larger sum remained
in Austrian land and securities. You will
observe then that this gentleman was


182 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
rich, and there was no allegation of his
having lost money, or being, in any way,
embarrassed. You see?”
I assented.
“This gentleman's habits were not ex-
pensive in proportion to his means. He had
suitable lodgings in Paris; and for a time,
society, the theatres, and other reasonable
amusements, engrossed him. He did not
play. He was a middle-aged man, affecting
youth, with the vanities which are usual in
such persons; but, for the rest, he was a
gentle and polite person, who disturbed
nobody—a person, you see, not likely to
provoke an enmity.”
“Certainly not,” I agreed.
“Early in the summer of 1811, he got an
order permitting him to copy a picture in
one of these salons, and came down here, to
Versailles, for the purpose. His work was
getting on slowly. After a time he left his


184 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
elsewhere that night, that he had very par-
ticular business in the north of France, not
far from Rouen, that he would set out before
daylight on his journey, and return in a fort-
night. He called a fiacre, took in his hand a
leather bag which, the servant said, was just
large enough to hold a few shirts and a coat,
but that it was enormously heavy, as he
could testify, for he held it in his hand, while
his master took out his purse to count thirty-
six Napoleons, for which the servant was to
account when he should return. He then
sent him on, in the carriage; and he, with the
bag I have mentioned, got into the fiacre.
Up to that, you see, the narrative is quite
clear.”
“Perfectly,” I agreed.
“Now comes the mystery,” said Monsieur
Carmaignac. “After that, the Count Cha-
teau Blassemare was never more seen, so far
as we can make out, by acquaintance or


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 185 .
friend. We learned that the day before the
Count's stockbroker had, by his direction, -
sold all his stock in the French funds, and
handed him the cash it realized. The rea-
son he gave him for this measure tallied with
what he said to his servant. He told him
that he was going to the north of France to
settle some claims, and did not know exactly
how much might be required. The bag,
which had puzzled the servant by its weight,
contained, no doubt, a large sum in gold.
Will Monsieur try my snuff?”
He politely tendered his open snuff-box,
of which I partook, experimentally.
“A reward was offered,” he continued,
“when the inquiry was instituted, for any
information tending to throw a light upon
the mystery, which might be afforded by
the driver of the fiacre ‘employed on the
night of" (so-and-so), ‘at about the hour
of half-past ten, by a gentleman, with a


186 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
black-leather travelling-bag in his hand, who
descended from a private carriage, and gave
his servant some money, which he counted
twice over. About a hundred-and-fifty
drivers applied, but not one of them was
the right man. We did, however, elicit a
curious and unexpected piece of evidence in
quite another quarter. What a racket that
plaguey harlequin makes with his sword!”
“Intolerable !” I chimed in.
The harlequin was soon gone, and he
resumed.
“The evidence I speak of, came from a
boy, about twelve years old, who knew the
appearance of the Count perfectly, having
been often employed by him as a messenger.
He stated that about half-past twelve
o'clock, on the same night—upon which
you are to observe, there was a brilliant
moon—he was sent, his mother having been
suddenly taken ill, for the sage femme who


188 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
with his eyes all the time on the Count Cha-
teau Blassemare, or the man he mistook for
him; his dress was not what he usually wore,
but the witness swore that he could not be
mistaken as to his identity. He said his
face looked grave and stern; but though he
did not smile, it was the same face he knew
so well. Nothing would make him swerve
from that. If that were he, it was the last
time he was seen. He has never been heard
of since. Nothing could be heard of him in
the neighbourhood of Rouen. There has
been no evidence of his death; and there is
no sign that he is living.”
“That certainly is a most singular case,”
I replied ; and was about to ask a question
or two, when Tom Whistlewick who, with-
out my observing it, had been taking a ramble,
returned, a great deal more awake, and a
great deal less tipsy.
“I say, Carmaignac, it is getting late, and


190 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
where are they, I wonder? I'll go over and
have a peep at the prophet.”
I saw him plucking at the blinds, which
were constructed something on the principle
of Venetian blinds; the red curtains were
inside ; but they did not yield, and he could
only peep under one that did not come quite
down.
When he rejoined us, he related: “I could
scarcely see the old fellow, it's so dark. He
is covered with gold and red, and has an em-
broidered hat on like a mandarin's; he's fast
asleep; and, by Jove, he smells like a pole-
cat! It's worth going over only to have it
to say. Fiew pooh! oh! It is a perfume.
Faugh !”
Not caring to accept this tempting invita-
tion, we got along slowly toward the door.
I bid them good-night, reminding them of
their promise. And so found my way at last
to my carriage; and was soon rolling slowly


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 191
toward the Dragon Volant, on the loneliest
of roads, under old trees, and the soft moon-
light.
What a number of things had happened
within the last two hours! what a variety of
strange and vivid pictures were crowded to-
gether in that brief space | What an adven-
ture was before me !
The silent, moonlighted, solitary road, how
it contrasted with the many-eddied whirl of
pleasure from whose roar and music, lights,
diamonds and colours, I had just extricated
myself.
The sight of lonely Nature at such an hour,
acts like a sudden sedative. The madness and
guilt of my pursuit struck me with a momen-
tary compunction and horror. I wished I
had never entered the labyrinth which was
leading me, I knew not whither. It was too
late to think of that now ; but the bitter
was already stealing into my cup ; and vague


CHAPTER XVI.
THE PARC OF THE CHATEAU DE LA
CARQUE.
HERE was no danger of the Dragon
Volant's closing its doors on that
occasion till three or four in the morning.
There were quartered there many servants of
great people, whose masters would not leave
the ball till the last moment, and who could
not return to their corners in the Dragon
Volant, till their last services had been
rendered.
I knew, therefore, I should have ample
VOL. II. O


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 195
where I stood, and the château, but a little to
the left, I traced the tufted masses of the
grove which the lady in the mask had ap-
pointed as the trysting-place, where I and
the beautiful Countess were to meet that
night.
I took “the bearings” of this gloomy bit
of wood, whose foliage glimmered softly at
top in the light of the moon.
You may guess with what a strange interest
and swelling of the heart I gazed on the un-
known scene of my coming adventure.
But time was flying, and the hour already
near. I threw my robe upon a sofa ; I groped
out a pair of boots, which I substituted for
those thin heelless shoes, in those days called
“pumps,” without which a gentleman could
not attend an evening party. I put on my
hat, and lastly, I took a pair of loaded pistols
which I had been advised were satisfactory com-
panions in the then unsettled state of French
O 2.


196 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
society: swarms of disbanded soldiers, some
of them alleged to be desperate characters,
being everywhere to be met with. These pre-
parations made, I confess I took a looking-
glass to the window to see how I looked in
the moonlight; and being satisfied, I replaced
it, and ran downstairs.
In the hall I called for my servant.
“St. Clair,” said I; “I mean to take a little
moonlight ramble, only ten minutes or so.
You must not go to bed until I return. If
the night is very beautiful, I may possibly
extend my ramble a little.”
So down the steps I lounged, looking first
over my right, and then over my left
shoulder, like a man uncertain which direction
to take, and I sauntered up the road, gazing
now at the moon, and now at the thin white
clouds in the opposite direction, whistling, all
the time, an air which I had picked up at
one of the theatres.


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 197
When I had got a couple of hundred yards
away from the Dragon Volant, my minstrelsy
totally ceased; and I turned about, and
glanced sharply down the road that looked as
white as hoar-frost under the moon, and saw
the gable of the old inn, and a window,
partly concealed by the foliage, with a dusky
light shining from it. -
No sound of footstep was stirring; no sign
of human figure in sight. I consulted my
watch, which the light was sufficiently strong
to enable me to do. It now wanted but eight
minutes of the appointed hour. A thick
mantle of ivy at this point covered the wall
and rose in a clustering head at top.
It afforded me facilities for scaling the
wall, and a partial screen for my operations,
if any eye should chance to be looking that
way. And now it was done. I was in the
park of the Château de la Carque, as nefarious


2OO IN A GLASS DARKLY.
space, and the moonlight fell unbroken upon
her. Nothing could be more becoming; her
figure looked more graceful and elegant than
ever. “In the meantime I shall tell you
some peculiarities of her situation. She is
unhappy; miserable in an ill-assorted mar-
riage, with a jealous tyrant who now would
constrain her to sell her diamonds, which
>>
are
“Worth thirty thousand pounds sterling.
I heard all that from a friend. Can I aid the
Countess in her unequal struggle: Say but
how, and the greater the danger or the sacri-
fice, the happier will it make me. Can I aid
her ?”
“If you despise a danger—which, yet, is
not a danger; if you despise, as she does, the
tyrannical canons of the world; and, if you
are chivalrous enough to devote yourself to a
lady's cause, with no reward but her poor
gratitude; if you can do these things you can


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 2OI
aid her, and earn a foremost place, not in her
gratitude only, but in her friendship.”
At those words the lady in the mask
turned away, and seemed to weep.
I vowed myself the willing slave of the
Countess. “But,” I added, “you told me
she would soon be here.”
“That is, if nothing unforeseen should
happen: but with the eye of the Count de
St. Alyre in the house, and open, it is
seldom safe to stir.”
“Does she wish to see me?” I asked, with
a tender hesitation.
“First, say have you really thought of
her, more than once, since the adventure of
the Belle Etoile.”
“She never leaves my thoughts; day and
night her beautiful eyes haunt me; her sweet
voice is always in my ear.”
- “Mine is said to resemble hers,” said the
mask.


2O2 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
“So it does,” I answered. “But it is only
a resemblance.”
“Oh ! then mine is better?”
“Pardon me, Mademoiselle, I did not say
that. Yours is a sweet voice, but I fancy a
little higher.”
“A little shriller, you would say,” an-
swered the De la Vallière, I fancied a good
deal vexed.
“No, not shriller: your voice is not shrill,
it is beautifully sweet; but not so patheti-
cally sweet as her.”
“That is prejudice, Monsieur; it is not
true.”
I bowed; I could not contradict a
lady.
“I see, Monsieur, you laugh at me; you
think me vain, because I claim in some
points to be equal to the Countess de St.
Alyre. I challenge you to say, my hand, at
least, is less beautiful than hers.” As she


2 o4. IN A GLASS DARKLY.
“Good Heavens !” I exclaimed. “How
monstrously stupid I have been. And it was
to Madame la Comtesse that I spoke for so
long in the salon " I gazed on her in silence.
And with a low sweet laugh of goodnature
she extended her hand. I took it, and car-
ried it to my lips.
“No, you must not do that,” she said,
quietly, “we are not old enough friends yet.
I find, although you were mistaken, that you
do remember the Countess of the Belle
Etoile, and that you are a champion true and
fearless. Had you yielded to the claims just
now pressed upon you by the rivalry of
Mademoiselle de la Vallière, in her mask,
the Countess de St. Alyre should never have
trusted or seen you more. I now am sure
that you are true, as well as brave. You
now know that I have not forgotten you ;
and, also, that if you would risk your life
for me, I, too, would brave some danger,


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 205
rather than lose my friend for ever. I have
but a few moments more. Will you come
here again to-morrow night, at a quarter
past eleven ? I will be here at that moment;
you must exercise the most scrupulous care to
prevent suspicion that you have come here,
Monsieur. 2 ou owe that to me.”
She spoke these last words with the most
solemn entreaty. -
I vowed again and again, that I would die
rather than permit the least rashness to
endanger the secret which made all the interest
and value of my life.
She was looking, I thought, more and
more beautiful every moment. My enthu-
siasm expanded in proportion.
“You must come to-morrow night by a
different route,” she said; “and if you come
again, we can change it once more. At the
other side of the château there is a little
churchyard, with a ruined chapel. The


2 IO IN A GLASS DARKLY.
with his back towards us, reading a news-
paper. He rose. It was the Count de St.
Alyre, his gold spectacles on his nose; his
black wig, in oily curls, lying close to his
narrow head, and showing, like carved ebony
over a repulsive visage of boxwood. His
black muffler had been pulled down. His
right arm was in a sling. I don't know
whether there was anything unusual in his
countenance that day, or whether it was but
the effect of prejudice arising from all I had
heard in my mysterious interview in his park,
but I thought his countenance was more
strikingly forbidding than I had seen it
before.
I was not callous enough in the ways of
sin to meet this man, injured at least in intent,
thus suddenly, without a momentary dis-
turbance.
He smiled.
“I called, Monsieur Beckett, in the hope of


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 2 II
finding you here,” he croaked, “and I medi-
tated, I fear, taking a great liberty, but my
friend the Marquis d'Harmonville, on whom
I have perhaps some claim, will perhaps give
me the assistance I require so much.”
“With great pleasure,” said the Marquis,
“but not till after six o'clock. I must go
this moment to a meeting of three or four
people, whom I cannot disappoint, and I
know, perfectly, we cannot break up earlier.”
“What am I to do P” exclaimed the Count,
“an hour would have done it all. Was ever
contre-temps so unlucky 1’’
“I’ll give you an hour, with pleasure,”
said I.
** HOW very good of you, Monsieur, I
hardly dare to hope it. The business, for so .
gay and charming a man as Monsieur Beckett,
is a little funeste. Pray read this note which
reached me this morning.”
It certainly was not cheerful. It was a
P 2.


2, 12, IN A GLASS DARKLY.
note stating that the body of his, the Count's
cousin, Monsieur de St. Amand, who had
died at his house, the Château Clery, had
been, in accordance with his written directions,
sent for burial at Père La Chaise, and, with
the permission of the Count de St. Alyre,
would reach his house (the Château de la
Carque), at about ten o'clock on the night
following, to be conveyed thence in a hearse,
with any member of the family who might
wish to attend the obsequies.
“I did not see the poor gentleman twice in
my life,” said the Count, “but this office, as
he has no other kinsman, disagreeable as it is,
I could scarcely decline, and so I want to
attend at the office to have the book signed,
and the order entered. But here is another
misery. By ill luck, I have sprained my
thumb, and can't sign my name for a week
to come. However, one name answers as
well as another. Yours as well as mine.


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 2 I 3
And as you are so good as to come with me,
all will go right.”
Away we drove. The Count gave me a
memorandum of the christian and surnames
of the deceased, his age, the complaint he
died of, and the usual particulars; also a note
of the exact position in which a grave, the
dimensions of which were described, of the
ordinary simple kind, was to be dug, between
two vaults belonging to the family of St.
Amand. The funeral, it was stated, would
arrive at half-past one o'clock A.M. (the next
night but one); and he handed me the money,
with extra fees, for a burial by night. It was
a good deal; and I asked him, as he entrusted
the whole affair to me, in whose name I
should take the receipt.
“Not in mine, my good friend. They
wanted me to become an executor, which I,
yesterday, wrote to decline; and I am in-
formed that if the receipt were in my name it


214. IN A GLASS DARKLY.
would constitute me an executor in the eye
of the law, and fix me in that position. Take
it, pray, if you have no objection, in your
own name.”
This, accordingly, I did.
“You will see, by-and-by, why I am
obliged to mention all these particulars.”
The Count, meanwhile, was leaning back
in the carriage, with his black silk muffler up
to his nose, and his hat shading his eyes,
while he dozed in his corner; in which state
I found him on my return.
Paris had lost its charm for me. I hurried
through the little business I had to do, longed
once more for my quiet room in the Dragon
Volant, the melancholy woods of the Château
de la Carque, and the tumultuous and thrilling
influence of proximity to the object of my
wild but wicked romance.
I was delayed some time by my stockbroker.
I had a very large sum, as I told you, at my


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 215
banker's, uninvested. I cared very little for
a few days interest—very little for the entire
sum, compared with the image that occupied
my thoughts, and beckoned me with a white
arm, through the dark, toward the spreading
lime-trees and chestnuts of the Château de la
Carque. But I had fixed this day to meet
him, and was relieved when he told me that I
had better let it lie in my banker's hands for
a few days longer, as the funds would cer-
tainly fall immediately. This accident, too,
was not without its immediate bearing on my
subsequent adventures.
When I reached the Dragon Volant, I
found, in my sitting-room, a good deal to
my chagrin, my two guests, whom I had
quite forgotten. I inwardly cursed my own
stupidity for having embarrassed myself with
their agreeable society. It could not be
helped now, however, and a word to the
waiters put all things in train for dinner.


216 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
Tom Whistlewick was in great force; and
he commenced almost immediately with a
very odd story. -
He told me that not only Versailles, but
all Paris, was in a ferment, in consequence of
a revolting, and all but sacrilegious, practical
joke, played off on the night before.
The pagoda, as he persisted in calling the
palanquin, had been left standing on the spot
where we last saw it. Neither conjuror, nor
usher, nor bearers had ever returned. When
the ball closed, and the company at length
retired, the servants who attended to put out
the lights, and secure the doors, found it still
there.
It was determined, however, to let it stand
where it was until next morning, by which
time, it was conjectured, its owners would
send messengers to remove it.
None arrived. The servants were then
ordered to take it away; and its extraordinary


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 217
weight, for the first time, reminded them of
its forgotten human occupant. Its door was
forced; and, judge what was their disgust,
when they discovered, not a living man, but
a corpse! Three or four days must have
passed since the death of the burly man in the
Chinese tunic and painted cap. Some people
thought it was a trick designed to insult the
Allies, in whose honour the ball was got up.
Others were of opinion that it was nothing
worse than a daring and cynical jocularity
which, shocking as it was, might yet be for-
given to the high spirits and irrepressible buf-
foonery of youth. Others, again, fewer in
number, and mystically given, insisted that
the corpse was bond fide necessary to the exhi-
bition, and that the disclosures and allusions
which had astonished so many people were
distinctly due to necromancy.
“The matter, however, is now in the
hands of the police,” observed Monsieur
p o


218 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
Carmaignac, “and we are not the body they
were two or three months ago, if the of:
fenders against propriety and public feeling
are not traced, and convicted, unless, indeed,
they have been a great deal more cunning
than such fools generally are.”
I was thinking within myself how utterly
inexplicable was my colloquy with the con-
juror, so cavalierly dismissed by Monsieur
Carmaignac as a “fool;” and the more I
thought the more marvellous it seemed.
“It certainly was an original joke, though
not a very clear one,” said Whistlewick.
“Not even original,” said Carmaignac.
“Very nearly the same thing was done, a
hundred years ago or more, at a state ball in
Paris; and the rascals who played the trick
were never found out.”
In this Monsieur Carmaignac, as I after-
wards discovered, spoke truly; for, among
my books of French anecdote and memoirs,


C H A P T E R XV III.
THE CHURCH-YARD.
UR dinner was really good, so were
the wines; better, perhaps, at this
out-of-the-way inn, than at some of the
more pretentious hotels in Paris. The moral
effect of a really good dinner is immense—
we all felt it. The serenity and goodnature
that follow are more solid and comfort-
able than the tumultuous benevolences of
Bacchus. -
My friends were happy, therefore, and
very chatty; which latter relieved me of the


2.2.2, IN A GLASS DARKLY.
town so easily at night; and though I stay
here, for this night, at least, I don't expect
to vanish like those others. But you say
there is another adventure, of the same kind,
connected with the same room. Do let us
hear it. But take some wine first.”
The story he told was curious.
“It happened,” said Carmaignac, “as well
as I recollect, before either of the other cases.
A French gentleman—I wish I could remem-
ber his name—the son of a merchant, came
to this inn (the Dragon Volant), and was
put by the landlord into the same room of
which we have been speaking. Your apart-
ment, Monsieur. He was by no means
young—past forty—and very far from good-
looking. The people here said that he was
the ugliest man, and the most good-natured,
that ever lived. He played on the fiddle,
sang, and wrote poetry. His habits were
odd and desultory. He would sometimes


224. IN A GLASS DARKLY.
mence that night, and that he was on no
account to be disturbed until nine o'clock in
the morning. He had two pairs of wax
candles, a little cold supper on a side-table,
his desk open, paper enough upon it to con-
tain the entire Henriade, and a proportionate
store of pens and ink.
Seated at this desk he was seen by the
waiter who brought him a cup of coffee at
nine o'clock, at which time the intruder said
he was writing fast enough to set fire to the
paper—that was his phrase; he did not look
up, he appeared too much engrossed. But,
when the waiter came back, half an hour
afterwards, the door was locked; and the
poet, from within, answered, that he must
not be disturbed.
Away went the gargon; and next morn-
ing at nine o'clock knocked at his door, and
receiving no answer, looked through the
key-hole; the lights were still burning, the


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 225
window-shutters were closed as he had left
them; he renewed his knocking, knocked
louder, no answer came. He reported this
continued and alarming silence to the inn-
keeper, who, finding that his guest had not
left his key in the lock, succeeded in finding
another that opened it. The candles were
just giving up the ghost in their sockets, but
there was light enough to ascertain that the
tenant of the room was gone! The bed had
not been disturbed; the window-shutter was
barred. He must have let himself out, and,
locking the door on the outside, put the
key in his pocket, and so made his way out
of the house. Here, however, was another
difficulty, the Dragon Volant shut its doors
and made all fast at twelve o’clock; after
that hour no one could leave the house, ex-
cept by obtaining the key and letting himself
out, and of necessity leaving the door un-
VOL. II. Q


226 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
secured, or else by collusion and aid of some
person in the house.
Now it happened that, some time after
the doors were secured, at half-past twelve,
a servant who had not been apprized of his
order to be left undisturbed, seeing a light
shine through the key-hole, knocked at the
door to inquire whether the poet wanted
anything. He was very little obliged to
his disturber, and dismissed him with a re-
newed charge that he was not to be inter-
rupted again during the night. This incident
established the fact that he was in the house
after the doors had been locked and barred.
The inn-keeper himself kept the keys, and
swore that he found them hung on the wall
above his head, in his bed, in their usual
place, in the morning; and that nobody
could have taken them away without
awakening him. That was all we could dis-
cover. The Count de St. Alyre, to whom


228 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
to believe that three persons should have
been consecutively murdered, in the same
room, and their bodies so effectually dis-
posed of that no trace of them was ever
discovered.”
From this we passed to other topics, and
the grave Monsieur Carmaignac amused us
with a perfectly prodigious collection of scan-
dalous anecdote, which his opportunities in
the police department had enabled him to
accumulate.
My guests happily had engagements in
Paris, and left me about ten.
I went up to my room, and looked out
upon the grounds of the Château de la
Carque. The moonlight was broken by
clouds, and the view of the park in this de-
sultory light, acquired a melancholy and
fantastic character.
The strange anecdotes recounted of the
room in which I stood, by Monsieur Car-


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 229
maignac, returned vaguely upon my mind,
drowning in sudden shadows the gaiety of
the more frivolous stories with which he had
followed them. I looked round me on the
room that lay in ominous gloom, with an
almost disagreeable sensation. I took my
pistols now with an undefined apprehension
that they might be really needed before my
return to-night. This feeling, be it under-
stood, in nowise chilled my ardour. Never
had my enthusiasm mounted higher. My
adventure absorbed and carried me away;
but it added a strange and stern excitement
to the expedition.
I loitered for a time in my room. I had
ascertained the exact point at which the little
churchyard lay. It was about a mile away;
I did not wish to reach it earlier than neces-
sary.
I stole quietly out, and sauntered along the
road to my left, and thence entered a nar-


23o IN A GLASS DARKLY.
rower track, still to my left, which, skirting
the park wall, and describing a circuitous
route, all the way, under grand old trees,
passes the ancient cemetery. That cemetery
is embowered in trees, and occupies little
more than half an acre of ground, to the
left of the road, interposing between it and
the park of the Château de la Carque.
Here, at this haunted spot, I paused and
listened. The place was utterly silent. A
thick cloud had darkened the moon, so that
I could distinguish little more than the out-
lines of near objects, and that vaguely enough;
and sometimes, as it were, floating in black
fog, the white surface of a tombstone
emerged.
Among the forms that met my eye against
the iron-grey of the horizon, were some of
those shrubs or trees that grow like our
junipers, some six feet high, in form like a
miniature poplar, with the darker foliage of


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 231
the yew. I do not know the name of the
plant, but I have often seen it in such
funereal places.
Knowing that I was a little too early, I
sat down upon the edge of a tombstone to
wait, as, for aught I knew, the beautiful
Countess might have wise reasons for not
caring that I should enter the grounds of the
château earlier than she had appointed. In
the listless state induced by waiting, I sat
there, with my eyes on the object straight
before me, which chanced to be that faint
black outline I have described. It was right
before me, about half-a-dozen steps away.
The moon now began to escape from
under the skirt of the cloud that had hid her
face for so long; and, as the light gradually
improved, the tree on which I had been
lazily staring began to take a new shape. It
was no longer a tree, but a man standing
motionless. Brighter and brighter grew the


234. IN A GLASS DARKLY.
stile at the road-side. The Colonel, who
was last, stood on the wall for awhile, look-
ing about him, and then jumped down on the
road. I heard their steps and talk as they
moved away together, with their backs toward
me, in the direction which led them farther and
farther from the Dragon Volant.
I waited until these sounds were quite lost in
distance before I entered the park. I followed
the instructions I had received from the
Countess de St. Alyre, and made my way
among brushwood and thickets to the point
nearest the ruinous temple, and crossed the
short intervening space of open ground
rapidly.
I was now once more under the gigantic
boughs of the old lime and chestnut trees;
softly, and with a heart throbbing fast,
I approached the little structure.
The moon was now shining steadily, pour-
ing down its radiance on the soft foliage, and


24.o IN A GLASS DARKLY.
I assented.
“I placed it there, that, to-morrow night,
when it comes, you may recognize it. So
soon as that rose-coloured light appears at
that window, it will be a signal to you that
the funeral has left the château, and that you
may approach safely. Come, then, to that
window; I will open it, and admit you. Five
minutes after a travelling-carriage, with four
horses, shall stand ready in the porte-cochère.
I will place my diamonds in your hands;
and so soon as we enter the carriage, our
flight commences. We shall have at least
five hours' start; and with energy, stratagem,
and resource, I fear nothing. Are you ready
to undertake all this for my sake?”
Again I vowed myself her slave.
“My only difficulty,” she said, “is how
we shall quickly enough convert my diamonds
into money; I dare not remove them while
my husband is in the house.”


242 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
“I have come provided, too, with a key,
the use of which I must explain.”
It was a double key—a long, slender stem,
with a key at each end—one about the size
which opens an ordinary room door; the
other, as small, almost, as the key of a dress-
ing-case.
“You cannot employ too much caution to-
morrow night. An interruption would murder
all my hopes. I have learned that you occupy
the haunted room in the Dragon Volant. It
is the very room I would have wished you in.
I will tell you why—there is a story of a man
who, having shut himself up in that room
one night, disappeared before morning. The
truth is, he wanted, I believe, to escape from
creditors; and the host of the Dragon Volant,
at that time, being a rogue, aided him in ab-
sconding. My husband investigated the mat-
ter, and discovered how his escape was made.
It was by means of this key. Here is a


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 24-5
pistols from my pocket, and cocked it. It
was obvious he had not seen me.
I stood, with my finger on the trigger,
determined to shoot him dead if he should
attempt to enter the place where the Countess
was. It would, no doubt, have been a
murder; but, in my mind, I had no question
or qualm about it. When once we engage in
secret and guilty practices we are nearer other
and greater crimes than we at all suspect.
“There's the statue,” said the Colonel, in his
brief discordant tones. “That's the figure.”
“Alluded to in the stanzas ?” inquired his
companion.
“The very thing. We shall see more next
time. Forward, Monsieur; let us march.”
And, much to my relief, the gallant
Colonel turned on his heel, and marched
through the trees, with his back toward the
château, striding over the grass, as I quickly
saw, to the park wall, which they crossed not
t
t


CHAPTER XX.
A H IG H – C A U L D C A P.
WAS now upon the road, within two
or three hundred yards of the Dragon
Volant. I had undertaken an adventure with
a vengeance And by way of prelude, there
not improbably awaited me, at my inn,
another encounter, perhaps, this time, not so
lucky, with the grotesque sabreur.
I was glad I had my pistols. I certainly
was bound by no law to allow a ruffian to
cut me down, unresisting.
Stooping boughs from the old park,


248 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
gigantic poplars on the other side, and the
moonlight over all, made the narrow road to
the inn-door picturesque.
I could not think very clearly just now ;
events were succeeding one another so rapidly,
and I, involved in the action of a drama so
extravagant and guilty, hardly knew myself
or believed my own story, as I slowly paced
towards the still open door of the Flying
Dragon. .
No sign of the Colonel, visible or audible,
was there. In the hall I inquired. No gen-
tleman had arrived at the inn for the last half
hour. I looked into the public room. It
was deserted. The clock struck twelve, and
I heard the servant barring the great door.
I took my candle. The lights in this rural
hostelry were by this time out, and the house
had the air of one that had settled to
slumber for many hours. The cold moon-
light streamed in at the window on the land-


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 249
ing, as I ascended the broad staircase; and
I paused for a moment to look over the
wooded grounds to the turreted château, to
me, so full of interest. I bethought me,
however, that prying eyes might read a
meaning in this midnight gazing, and pos-
sibly the Count himself might, in his jealous
mood, surmise a signal in this unwonted
light in the stair-window of the Dragon
Volant.
On opening my room door, with a little
start, I met an extremely old woman with
the longest face I ever saw ; she had what
used to be termed, a high-cauld-cap, on,
the white border of which contrasted with
her brown and yellow skin, and made her
wrinkled face more ugly. She raised her
curved shoulders, and looked up in my face,
with eyes unnaturally black and bright.
“I have lighted a little wood, Monsieur,
because the night is chill.”


25o IN A GLASS DARKLY.
I thanked her, but she did not go. She
stood with her candle in her tremulous
fingers.
“Excuse an old woman, Monsieur,” she
said; “but what on earth can a young
English milord, with all Paris at his feet,
find to amuse him in the Dragon Vo-
lant P” -
Had I been at the age of fairy tales, and
in daily intercourse with the delightful
Countess d’Aulnois, I should have seen in
this withered apparition, the genius loci, the
malignant fairy, at the stamp of whose foot,
the ill-fated tenants of this very room had,
from time to time, vanished. I was past
that, however; but the old woman's dark
eyes were fixed on mine, with a steady
meaning that plainly told me that my secret
was known. I was embarrassed and alarm-
ed; I never thought of asking her what
business that was of hers.


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 251
“These old eyes saw you in the park of
the château to-night.”
“I l” I began, with all the scornful sur-
prise I could affect.
“It avails nothing, Monsieur; I know
why you stay here; and I tell you to be-
gone. Leave this house to-morrow morn-
ing, and never come again.”
She lifted her disengaged hand, as she
looked at me with intense horror in her eyes.
“There is nothing on earth – I don’t
know what you mean,” I answered; “and
why should you care about me?”
“I don't care about you, Monsieur—I
care about the honour of an ancient family,
whom I served in their happier days, when
to be noble, was to be honoured. But my
words are thrown away, Monsieur; you
are insolent. I will keep my secret, and
you, yours; that is all. You will soon find
it hard enough to divulge it.”


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 253
“Keep your secret, and I'll keep mine?”
I had a thousand distracting questions
before me. My progress seemed like a
journey through the Spessart, where at every
step some new goblin or monster starts from
the ground or steps from behind a tree.
Peremptorily I dismissed these harassing
and frightful doubts. I secured my door, sat
myself down at my table, and with a candle
at each side, placed before me the piece of
vellum which contained the drawings and
notes on which I was to rely for full instruc-
tions as to how to use the key.
When I had studied this for awhile, I
made my investigation. The angle of the
room at the right side of the window was cut
off by an oblique turn in the wainscot. I
examined this carefully, and, on pressure, a
small bit of the frame of the woodwork slid
aside, and disclosed a keyhole. On removing
my finger, it shot back to its place again, with


THE DRAGON volaNT. 255
of the key fitted this. The lock was stiff; I
set the candle down upon the stair, and ap-
plied both hands; it turned with difficulty,
and as it revolved, uttered a shriek that
alarmed me for my secret.
For some minutes I did not move. In a
little time, however, I took courage, and
opened the door. The night-air floating in,
puffed out the candle. There was a thicket
of holly and underwood, as dense as a jungle,
close about the door. I should have been in
pitch-darkness, were it not that through the
topmost leaves, there twinkled, here and there,
a glimmer of moonshine.
Softly, lest any one should have opened
his window, at the sound of the rusty bolt, I
struggled through this, till I gained a view of
the open grounds. Here I found that the
brushwood spread a good way up the park,
uniting with the wood that approached the
little temple I have described.


256 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
A general could not have chosen a more
effectually-covered approach from the Dragon
Volant to the trysting-place where hitherto I
had conferred with the idol of my lawless
adoration.
Looking back upon the old inn, I dis-
covered that the stair I descended, was
enclosed in one of those slender turrets that
decorate such buildings. It was placed at
that angle which corresponded with the part
of the paneling of my room indicated in the
plan I had been studying.
Thoroughly satisfied with my experiment,
I made my way back to the door, with some
little difficulty, re-mounted to my room,
locked my secret door again; kissed the
mysterious key that her hand had pressed
that night, and placed it under my pillow,
upon which, very soon after, my giddy head
was laid, not, for some time, to sleep
soundly.


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 259 -
morning, would supply an extemporized
wardrobe. It was now two o'clock; only
two ! How on earth was I to dispose of the
remainder of the day?
I had not yet seen the cathedral of Notre
Dame; and thither I drove. I spent an
hour or more there ; and then to the Con-
ciergerie, the Palais de Justice, and the beau-
tiful Sainte Chapelle. Still there remained
some time to get rid of, and I strolled into
the narrow streets adjoining the cathedral.
I recollect seeing, in one of them, an old
house with a mural inscription stating that it
had been the residence of Canon Fulbert,
the uncle of Abelard's Eloise. I don’t know
whether these curious old streets, in which
I observed fragments of ancient gothic
churches fitted up as warehouses, are still
extant. I lighted, among other dingy and
eccentric shops, upon one that seemed that
of a broker of all sorts of old decorations,
S 2.


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 251
the other was the Marquis d'Harmonville.
The third, who was fiddling with a pen, was
a lean, pale man, pitted with the small-pox,
with lank black hair, and about as mean-
looking a person as I had ever seen in my
life. The Marquis looked up, and his glance
was instantaneously followed by his two com-
panions. For a moment I hesitated what to
do. But it was plain that I was not recog-
nized, as indeed I could hardly have been,
the light from the window being behind
me, and the portion of the shop imme-
diately before me, being very dark in-
deed.
Perceiving this, I had presence of mind to
affect being entirely engrossed by the objects
before me, and strolled slowly down the
shop again. I paused for a moment to hear
whether I was followed, and was relieved
when I heard no step. You may be sure I
did not waste more time in that shop, where


262 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
I had just made a discovery so curious and
so unexpected. -
It was no business of mine to inquire what
brought Colonel Gaillarde and the Marquis
together, in so shabby, and even dirty a
place, or who the mean person, biting the
feather end of his pen, might be. Such em-
ployments as the Marquis had accepted
sometimes make strange bed-fellows.
I was glad to get away, and just as the
sun set, I had reached the steps of the
Dragon Volant, and dismissed the vehicle in
which I arrived, carrying in my hand a strong
box, of marvellously small dimensions con-
sidering all it contained, strapped in a leather
cover, which disguised its real character.
When I got to my room, I summoned St.
Clair. I told him nearly the same story, I
had already told my host. I gave him fifty
pounds, with orders to expend whatever was
necessary on himself, and in payment for my


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 263
rooms till my return. I then eat a slight and
hasty dinner. My eyes were often upon the
solemn old clock over the chimney-piece,
which was my sole accomplice in keeping
tryste in this iniquitous venture. The sky
favoured my design, and darkened all things
with a sea of clouds. -
The innkeeper met me in the hall, to ask
whether I should want a vehicle to Paris?
I was prepared for this question, and in-
stantly answered that I meant to walk to Ver-
sailles, and take a carriage there. I called St.
Clair.
“Go,” said I, “and drink a bottle of wine
with your friends. I shall callyou if I should
want anything; in the meantime, here is the
key of my room; I shall be writing some
notes, so don’t allow any one to disturb me,
for at least half an hour. At the end of that
time you will probably find that I have left
this for Versailles; and should you not find


264 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
me in the room, you may take that for
granted; and you take charge of everything,
and lock the door, you understand?”
St. Clair took his leave, wishing me all
happiness and no doubt promising himself
some little amusement with my money.
With my candle in my hand, I hastened
upstairs. It wanted now but five minutes
to the appointed time. I do not think there
is anything of the coward in my nature; but
I confess, as the crisis approached, I felt
something of the suspense and awe of a
soldier going into action. Would I have
receded? Not for all this earth could
offer.
I bolted my door, put on my great coat,
and placed my pistols, one in each pocket.
I now applied my key to the secret locks;
drew the wainscot-door a little open, took
my strong box under my arm, extinguished
my candle, unbolted my door, listened at it


CHAPTER XXII.
RAPTURE.
- D°' the screw-stair I went in utter
darkness; and having reached the
stone floor, I discerned the door and groped
out the key-hole. With more caution, and
less noise than upon the night before, I
opened the door, and stepped out into the
thick brushwood. It was almost as dark in
this jungle.
Having secured the door, I slowly pushed
my way through the bushes, which soon
became less dense. Then, with more ease,


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 267
but still under thick cover, I pursued in the
track of the wood, keeping near its edge.
At length, in the darkened air, about fifty
yards away, the shafts of the marble temple
rose like phantoms before me, seen through
the trunks of the old trees. Everything
favoured my enterprise. I had effectually
mystified my servant and the people of the
Dragon Volant, and so dark was the night,
that even had I alarmed the suspicions of all
the tenants of the inn, I might safely defy
their united curiosity, though posted at every
window of the house.
Through the trunks, over the roots of the
-old trees, I reached the appointed place of
observation. I laid my treasure, in its
leathern case, in the embrasure, and leaning
my arms upon it, looked steadily in the
direction of the château. The outline of the
building was scarcely discernible, blending
dimly, as it did, with the sky. No light in


27o - IN A GLASS DARKLY.
grasped my strong box under my arm, and
with rapid strides approached the Château
de la Carque. No sign of light or life, no
human voice, no tread of foot, no bark of
dog, indicated a chance of interruption. A
blind was down; and as I came close to the
tall window, I found that half-a-dozen steps
led up to it, and that a large lattice, answer-
ing for a door, lay open.
A shadow from within fell upon the blind;
it was drawn aside, and as I ascended the
steps, a soft voice murmured—“Richard,
dearest Richard, come, oh ! come! how I
have longed for this moment?”
Never did she look so beautiful. My
love rose to passionate enthusiasm. I only
wished there were some real danger in the
adventure worthy of such a creature. When
the first tumultuous greeting was over, she
made me sit beside her on a sofa. There we
talked for a minute or two. She told me


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 273
“I know who this is,” she said, in a
whisper to me.
I saw that she was not alarmed. She went
softly to the door, and a whispered conver-
sation for a minute followed.
“My trusty maid, who is coming with us.
She says we cannot safely go sooner than ten
minutes. She is bringing some coffee to the
next room.” -
She opened the door and looked in.
“I must tell her not to take too much
luggage. She is so odd! Don't follow—
stay where you are—it is better that she
should not see you.”
She left the room with a gesture of cau-
tion.
A change had come over the manner of
this beautiful woman. For the last few
minutes a shadow had been stealing over
her, an air of abstraction, a look bordering
on suspicion. Why was she pale: Why
VOL. II. T


274 IN A GLASS DARKLY.
had there come that dark look in her eyes?
Why had her very voice become changed?
Had anything gone suddenly wrong? Did
some danger threaten ?
This doubt, however, speedily quieted
itself. If there had been anything of the
kind, she would, of course, have told me.
It was only natural that, as the crisis ap-
proached, she should become more and
more nervous. She did not return quite so
soon as I had expected. To a man in my
situation absolute quietude is next to im-
possible. I moved restlessly about the room.
It was a small one. There was a door at
the other end. I opened it, rashly enough.
I listened, it was perfectly silent. I was in
an excited, eager state, and every faculty
engrossed about what was coming, and in
so far detached from the immediate present.
I can’t account, in any other way, for my
having done so many foolish things that


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 277
I drew back with a double shock. So,
then, the funeral after all had not yet left |
Here lay the body. I had been deceived.
This, no doubt, accounted for the embar-
rassment so manifest in the Countess's man-
ner. She would have done more wisely
had she told me the true state of the
CalSe.
I drew back from this melancholy room,
and closed the door. Her distrust of me
was the worst rashness she could have com-
mitted. There is nothing more dangerous
than misapplied caution. In entire ignorance
of the fact I had entered the room, and
there I might have lighted upon some of
the very persons it was our special anxiety
that I should avoid.
These reflections were interrupted, almost
2S SOOn aS begun, by the return of the
Countess de St. Alyre. I saw at a glance
that she detected in my face some evidence


THE DRAGON VOLAN. T. 279
before to-morrow. The hearse with the
body must leave this in ten minutes. So
soon as it is gone, we shall be free to set
out upon our wild and happy journey. The
horses are to the carriage in the porte-cochère.
As for this funeste horror (she shuddered
very prettily), let us think of it no more.”
She bolted the door of communication, and
when she turned, it was with such a pretty
penitence in her face and attitude, that I was
ready to throw myself at her feet.
“It is the last time,” she said, in a sweet
sad little pleading, “I shall ever practise a
deception on my brave and beautiful Richard
- —my hero? Am I forgiven.”
Here was another scene of passionate
effusion, and lovers' raptures and declamations,
but only murmured, lest the ears of listeners
should be busy.
At length, on a sudden, she raised her
hand, as if to prevent my stirring, her eyes


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 283
was to set out upon our journey; and, as I
spoke, suddenly an odd sensation overcame
me. It was not in the slightest degree like
faintness. I can find no phrase to describe it,
but a sudden constraint of the brain; it was
as if the membrane in which it lies, if there
be such a thing, contracted, and became in-
flexible.
“Dear Richard! what is the matter?” she
exclaimed, with terror in her looks. “Good
Heavens! are you ill. I conjure you, sit
down; sit in this chair.” She almost forced
me into one ; I was in no condition to offer
the least resistance. I recognised but too truly
the sensations that supervened. I was lying
back in the chair in which I sat without the
power, by this time, of uttering a syllable, of
closing my eyelids, of moving my eyes, of
stirring a muscle. I had in a few seconds
glided into precisely the state in which I had
passed so many appalling hours when ap-


THE DRAGON VOLANT. 285
the jewels) and my strong box, side by side
on the table; and I saw her carefully lock the
door that gave access to the room in which I
had just now sipped my coffee.
END OF THE SECOND VOLUME.
LONDON :
Printed by A. Schulze, 13, Poland Street.