"You want to climb to the ledge of one of the windows? What about the shutters?"
"I don't expect they're very close. You can see the light shining through the middle."
"Well, but why are you doing it? There is no reason to bother about this house more than any other."
"Yes, there is. You yourself told me that one of the wounded prisoners said Prince Conrad had taken up his quarters in a villa outside Èbrecourt. Now this one, standing in the middle of a sort of entrenched camp and at the entrance to the tunnel, seems to me marked out. . . ."
"Not to mention this really princely dinner-party," said Bernard, laughing. "You're right. Up you go."
They crossed the walk. With Bernard's assistance, Paul was easily able to grip the ledge above the basement floor and to hoist himself to the stone balcony.
"That's it," he said. "Go back to where we were and whistle in case of danger."
After bestriding the balustrade, he carefully loosened one of the shutters by passing first his fingers and then his hand through the intervening space; and he succeeded in unfastening the bolt. The curtains, being crossed inside, enabled him to move about unseen; but they were open at the top, leaving an inverted triangle through which he could see by climbing on to the balustrade.
He did so and then bent forward and looked.
The sight that met his eyes was such and gave him so horrible a blow that his legs began to shake beneath him. . . .
A table running parallel with the three windows of the room. An incredible collection of bottles, decanters and glasses, hardly leaving room for the dishes of cake and fruit. Ornamental side-dishes flanked by bottles of champagne. A basket of flowers surrounded by liqueur-bottles.
Twenty persons were seated at table, including half-a-dozen women in low-necked dresses. The others were officers, covered with gold lace and orders.
In the middle, facing the window, sat Prince Conrad, presiding over the banquet, with a lady on his right and another on his left. And it was the sight of these three, brought together in the most improbable defiance of the logic of things, that caused Paul to undergo a torture which was renewed from moment to moment.
That one of the two women should be there, on the prince's right, sitting stiff-backed in her plum-colored stuff gown, with a black-lace scarf half-hiding her short hair, was easy to understand. But the other woman, to whom Prince Conrad kept turning with a clumsy affectation of gallantry, that woman whom Paul contemplated with horror-struck eyes and whom he would have liked to strangle where she sat, what was she doing there? What was Élisabeth doing in the midst of those tipsy officers and dubious German women, beside Prince Conrad and beside the monstrous creature who was pursuing her with her hatred?