g
at Versailles. He made a large fortune under the Restoration; and as
his place at Court would not allow him to go very far from Paris, he had
taken a country house between the church and the barrier of Montreuil,
on the road that leads to the Avenue de Saint-Cloud.

The house had been built originally as a retreat for the short-lived
loves of some _grand seigneur_. The grounds were very large; the gardens
on either side extending from the first houses of Montreuil to the
thatched cottages near the barrier, so that the owner could enjoy all
the pleasures of solitude with the city almost at his gates. By an odd
piece of contradiction, the whole front of the house itself, with the
principal entrance, gave directly upon the street. Perhaps in time past
it was a tolerably lonely road, and indeed this theory looks all the
more probable when one comes to think of it; for not so very far away,
on this same road, Louis Quinze built a delicious summer villa for Mlle.
de Romans, and the curious in such things will discover that the
wayside _casinos_ are adorned in a style that recalls traditions of the
ingenious taste displayed in debauchery by our ancestors who, with all
the license paid to their charge, sought to invest it with secrecy and
mystery.

One winter evening the family were by themselves in the lonely house.
The servants had received permission to go to Versailles to celebrate
the wedding of one of their number. It was Christmas time, and the
holiday makers, presuming upon the double festival, did not scruple to
outstay their leave of absence; yet, as the General was well known to be
a man of his word, the culprits felt some twinges of conscience as they
danced on after the hour of return. The clocks struck eleven, and still
there was no sign of the servants.

A deep silence prevailed over the country-side, broken only by the sound
of the northeast wind whistling through the black branches, wailing
about the house, dying in gusts along the corridors. The hard frost had
purified the air, and held the earth in its grip; the roads gave back
every sound with the hard metallic ring which always strikes us with
a new surprise; the heavy footsteps of some belated reveler, or a cab
returning to Paris, could be heard for a long distance with unwonted
distinctness. Out in the courtyard a few dead leaves set a-dancing
by some eddying gust found a voice for the night which fain had been
silent. It was, in fact, one of those s