In this way the piano hour became the daily hour for adventures, without
detriment, however, to the evening ones. We appointed meetings in one of
these straggling rooms, and from there would go to the "I don't know
where" or the "As you please" of fancy.

From the attic where I was supposed to be playing scales, I could see a
labyrinth of roofs, sheds, lofts, and slopes, all covered with
moss-grown tiles and decorated with broken chimneys, offering a vast
field for new explorations. So on the roof we went. It was not hard to
jump out of the window. Six feet below us there was a gutter joining two
gables. It was more imprudent than difficult to scale these gables, meet
others, jump from slope to slope, and run about like cats; and danger,
far from restraining, only seemed to stimulate us.

There was something exceedingly foolish, but at the same time heroic, in
this mania of "seeking the victim"; foolish, because we had to suppose
that the nuns, whose gentleness and kindness we worshipped, were
practicing horrible tortures upon some one; heroic, because we risked
our lives every day to deliver an imaginary creature, who was the object
of our most generous thought and most chivalrous undertakings.

We had been out about an hour, spying into the garden, looking down on a
great part of the courts and buildings, and carefully hiding behind
chimneys whenever we saw a black-veiled nun, who might have raised her
head and seen us in the clouds, when we asked ourselves how we should
get back. The arrangement of the roofs had allowed us to step or jump
down. Going up was not so easy. I think it would have been impossible
without a ladder. We scarcely knew where we were. At last we recognized
a parlor-boarder's window,--Sidonie Macdonald's, the celebrated
general's daughter. It could be reached by a final jump, but would be