were all Monsieur Gardinois could hear when he applied his ear to the
tube. As for voices, they reached him in the form of a confused buzzing,
like the muttering of a crowd, in which it was impossible to distinguish
anything. He had nothing to show for the expense of the apparatus, and
he concealed his wonderful tube in a fold of his bed-curtains.

One night Gardinois, who had fallen asleep, was awakened suddenly by the
creaking of a door. It was an extraordinary thing at that hour. The
whole house hold was asleep. Nothing could be heard save the footsteps
of the watch-dogs on the sand, or their scratching at the foot of a tree
in which an owl was screeching. An excellent opportunity to use his
listening-tube! Upon putting it to his ear, M. Gardinois was assured
that he had made no mistake. The sounds continued. One door was opened,
then another. The bolt of the front door was thrown back with an effort.
But neither Pyramus nor Thisbe, not even Kiss, the formidable
Newfoundland, had made a sign. He rose softly to see who those strange
burglars could be, who were leaving the house instead of entering it;
and this is what he saw through the slats of his blind:

A tall, slender young man, with Georges's figure and carriage, arm-in-arm
with a woman in a lace mantilla. They stopped first at the bench by the
Paulownia, which was in full bloom.

It was a superb moonlight night. The moon, silvering the treetops, made
numberless flakes of light amid the dense foliage. The terraces, white
with moonbeams, where the Newfoundlands in their curly coats went to and
fro, watching the night butterflies, the smooth, deep waters of the
ponds, all shone with a mute, calm brilliance, as if reflected in a
silver mirror. Here and there glow-worms twinkled on the edges of the
greensward.