Presently the vast clamor of Paris, brought down on the current, was
hushed; lights were extinguished one by one in the houses; silence
spread over all; and the huge city slept like a tired giant.

Midnight struck. The least noise, the fall of a leaf, or the flight
of a jackdaw changing its perching-place among the pinnacles of
Notre-Dame, would have been enough to bring the stranger's mind to
earth again, to have made the youth drop from the celestial heights
to which his soul had soared on the wings of rapture.

And then the old man heard with dismay a groan mingling with the sound
of a heavy fall--the fall, as his experienced ear assured him, of a
dead body. He hastened into Godefroid's room, and saw him lying in a
heap with a long rope tight round his neck, the end meandering over
the floor.

When he had untied it, the poor lad opened his eyes.

"Where am I?" he asked, with a hopeful gleam.

"In your own room," said the elder man, looking with surprise at
Godefroid's neck, and at the nail to which the cord had been tied, and
which was still in the knot.

"In heaven?" said the boy, in a voice of music.

"No; on earth!"

Godefroid rose and walked along the path of light traced on the floor
by the moon through the window, which stood open; he saw the rippling