all left their rooms, and followed the others.

So that Master Chevassat had nearly a dozen curious persons behind him,
when he stopped on the fifth floor to take breath.

The door to Miss Henrietta's room was the first on the left in the
passage. He knocked at first gently, then harder, and at last with all
his energy, till his heavy fists shook the thin partition-walls of all
the rooms.

Between each blow he cried,--

"Miss Henrietta, Miss Henrietta, they want you!"

No reply came.

"Well!" he said triumphantly, "you see!"

But, whilst the man was knocking at the door, M. Ravinet had knelt down,
and tried to open the door a little, putting now his eye, and now his
ear, to the keyhole and to the slight opening between the door and the
frame.

Suddenly he rose deadly pale.

"It is all over; we are too late!"

And, as the neighbors expressed some doubts, he cried furiously,--

"Have you no noses? Don't you smell that abominable charcoal?"