_At the Amour de Dieu._
When I woke in the morning, the sun was shining broadly into the room,
glinting in the little pools of water on the floor. I stared at them,
sleepy-eyed, till recollection came to me of the thunder-storm and the
open shutter and the three men. I jumped up and ran to the window. The
shutters opposite were closed; the house just as I had seen it first,
save for the long streaks of wet down the wall. The street below was one
vast puddle. At all events, the storm was no dream, as I half believed
the vision to be.
I dressed speedily and went down-stairs. The inn-room was deserted save
for Maître Jacques, who, with heat, demanded of me whether I took myself
for a prince, that I lay in bed till all decent folk had been hours
about their business, and then expected breakfast. However, he brought
me a meal, and I made no complaint that it was a poor one.
"You have strange neighbours in the house opposite," said I.
He started, and the thin wine he was setting before me splashed over on
the table.
"What neighbours?"
"Why, they who close their shutters when other folks would keep them
open, and open them when others keep them shut," I said airily. "Last
night I saw three men in the window opposite mine."
He laughed.
"Aha, my lad, your head is not used to our Paris wines. That is how you
came to see visions."
"Nonsense," I cried, nettled. "Your wine is too well watered for that,
let me tell you, Maître Jacques."
"Then you dreamed it," he said huffily. "The proof is that no one has
lived in that house these twenty years."
Now, I had plenty to trouble about without troubling my head over
night-hawks, but I was vexed with him for putting me off. So, with a
fine conceit of my own shrewdness, I said:
"If it was only a dream, how came you to spill the wine?"
He gave me a keen glance, and then, with a look round to see that no one
was by, leaned across the table, up to me.
"You are sharp as a gimlet," said he. "I see I may as well tell you
first as last. Marry, an you will have it, the place is haunted."
"Holy Virgin!" I cried, crossing myself.
"Aye. Twenty years ago, in the great massacre--you know naught of that:
you were not born, I take it, and, besides, are a country boy. But I was
here, and I know. A man dared not stir out of doors that dark day. The
gutters ran blood."
"And that house--what happened in that house?"
"Why, it was the house of a Huguenot gentleman, M. de Béthune," he
answered, bringing out the name hesitatingly in a low voice. "They were
all put to the sword--the whole household. It was Guise's work. The Duc
de Guise sat on his white horse, in this very street here, while it was
going on. Parbleu! that was a day."
"Mon dieu! yes."
"Well, that is an old story now," he resumed in a different tone.
"One-and-twenty years ago, that was. Such things don't happen now. But
the people, they have not forgotten; they will not go near that house.
No one will live there."
"And have others seen as well as I?"
"So they say. But I'll not let it be talked of on my premises. Folk
might get to think them too near the haunted house. 'Tis another matter
with you, though, since you have had the vision."
"There were three men," I said, "young men, in sombre dress--"
"M. de Béthune and his cousins. What further? Did you hear shrieks?"
"There was naught further," I said, shuddering. "I saw them for the
space of a lightning-flash, plain as I see you. The next minute the
shutters were closed again."
"'Tis a marvel," he answered gravely. "But I know what has disturbed
them in their graves, the heretics! It is that they have lost their
leader."