breakfast, which will not interfere in the least with your
night-watch. On the contrary, it will acquaint you with the localities.
Only you must tell no one."

"Oh!" exclaimed Sir John, "do I look like a gabbler?"

"No, that's true," cried Roland laughing, "you are not a gabbler, but I
am a ninny." So saying, he entered his bedchamber.

After breakfast the two young men sauntered down the slopes of the
garden, as if to take a walk along the banks of the Reissouse. Then they
bore to the left, swung up the hill for about forty paces, struck into
the highroad, and crossed the woods, till they reached the convent wall
at the very place where Roland had climbed over it on the preceding
night.

"My lord," said Roland, "this is the way."

"Very well," replied Sir John, "let us take it."

Slowly, with a wonderful strength of wrist, which betokened a man well
trained in gymnastics, the Englishman seized the coping of the wall,
swung himself to the top, and dropped down on the other side. Roland
followed with the rapidity of one who is not achieving a feat for the
first time. They were both on the other side, where the desertion and
desolation were more visible by night than by day. The grass was growing
knee high in the paths; the espaliers were tangled with vines so thick
that the grapes could not ripen in the shadow of the leaves. The wall
had given way in several places, and ivy, the parasite rather than the
friend of ruins, was spreading everywhere.

As for the trees in the open space, plums, peaches and apricots, they
had grown with the freedom of the oaks and beeches in the forest, whose
breadth and thickness they seemed to envy. The sap, completely absorbed
by the branches which were many and vigorous, produced but little fruit,
and that imperfect. By the rustle of the tall grass, Sir John and Roland
divined that the lizards, those crawling offsprings of solitude, had
established their domicile there, from which they fled in amazement at
this disturbance.

Roland led his friend straight to the door between the orchard and the
cloister, but before entering he glanced at the clock. That clock, which
went at night, was stopped in the day time. From the cloister he passed
into the refectory. There the daylight showed under their true aspect
the various objects which the darkness had clothed with such fantastic
forms the night before. Roland showed Sir John the overturned stools,
the table marked by the blow of the p