The next moment I felt myself sliding down the face of the house,
down into the depth. The light shot up. My head turned giddily.
I clung, oh, how I clung to that rope! Half way down the thought
struck me that in case of accident those above might not be
strong enough to pull me up again. But it was too late to think
of that, and in another second my feet touched the beam. I
breathed again. Softly, very gingerly, I made good my footing on
the slender bridge, and, disengaging the rope, let it go. Then,
not without another qualm, I sat down astride of the beam, and
whistled in token of success. Success so far!

It was a strange position, and I have often dreamed of it since.
In the darkness about me Paris lay to all seeming asleep. A
veil, and not the veil of night only, was stretched between it
and me; between me, a mere lad, and the strange secrets of a
great city; stranger, grimmer, more deadly that night than ever
before or since. How many men were watching under those dimly-
seen roofs, with arms in their hands? How many sat with murder
at heart? How many were waking, who at dawn would sleep for
ever, or sleeping who would wake only at the knife's edge? These
things I could not know, any more than I could picture how many
boon-companions were parting at that instant, just risen from the
dice, one to go blindly--the other watching him--to his death? I
could not imagine, thank Heaven for it, these secrets, or a
hundredth part of the treachery and cruelty and greed that lurked
at my feet, ready to burst all bounds at a pistol-shot. It had
no significance for me that the past day was the 23rd of August,
or that the morrow was St. Bartholomew's feast!

No. Yet mingled with the jubilation which the possibility of