"A challenge! Never was sleep less desired. Though the breakfast hour finds us here, as H. C. foretells, there shall be no want of attention. But do not forget the black coffee!"
We heard H. C.'s receding echoes through the labyrinthine passages; the closing of a door; then a voice gently elevated in song, utterly oblivious of small hours and unconscious neighbours. "Drink to me only with thine eyes, and I will pledge with mine," it warbled; "leave but a kiss within the cup, and I'll ne'er ask for wine."
Here recollection seemed to come to the voice; an open window looking on to a passage was softly closed, and all was silent. H. C. was evidently thinking of the charming face he had seen at the opera, all the more lovely and modest contrasted with the shameless old woman at its side.
Delormais led the way through the corridors. His light threw weird shadows around. A distant clock struck the hour of one. The hush in the house was ghostly. The very walls seemed pregnant with the secrets of the past. They had listened to mighty dramas political and domestic; heard love-vows made only to be broken; absorbed the laughter of joy and the tears of sorrow. All this they now appeared to be giving out as we went between them, treading quietly on marble pavement sacred to the memory of the dead.
We entered Delormais' sitting-room. At once he turned up two lamps, and lighting some half-dozen candles produced an illumination.
"One of my weaknesses," he said. "I love to take night walks and lose myself in thought under the dark starlit skies, but that is quite another thing. In my room I must have brilliancy."
"When you are a bishop you will so indulge this weakness that your palace will be called a Shining Light, its lord a Beacon of the Church."
A peculiar smile passed over the face of Delormais. We did not understand it at the moment, but knew its meaning later on.
Then he brought forward the coffee equipage, for which, if truth must be told, though slumber was never farther from us, we were grateful.
"I had it all prepared by our amiable host, and I have my own spirit-lamp, without which I never travel," said the priest. "There are times when I visit the most uncivilised, hope-forgotten places, and if I had not a few accessories with me, should fare badly."
