"In any case, I must have a proper man here," he said. "I will fetch
one."

The gloomy look which accompanied these words overcame the countess,
who fell back in the bed with a moan, caused more by a sense of her fate
than by the agony of the coming crisis; that moan convinced the count of
the justice of the suspicions that were rising in his mind. Affecting
a calmness which the tones of his voice, his gestures, and looks
contradicted, he rose hastily, wrapped himself in a dressing-gown which
lay on a chair, and began by locking a door near the chimney through
which the state bedroom was entered from the reception rooms which
communicated with the great staircase.

Seeing her husband pocket that key, the countess had a presentiment of
danger. She next heard him open the door opposite to that which he had
just locked and enter a room where the counts of Herouville slept when
they did not honor their wives with their noble company. The countess
knew of that room only by hearsay. Jealousy kept her husband always with
her. If occasionally some military expedition forced him to leave her,
the count left more than one Argus, whose incessant spying proved his
shameful distrust.

In spite of the attention the countess now gave to the slightest noise,
she heard nothing more. The count had, in fact, entered a long gallery
leading from his room which continued down the western wing of the
castle. Cardinal d'Herouville, his great-uncle, a passionate lover of
the works of printing, had there collected a library as interesting for
the number as for the beauty of its volumes, and prudence had caused
him to build into the walls one of those curious inventions suggested by
solitude or by monastic fears. A silver chain set in motion, by means of
invisible wires, a bell placed at the bed's head of a faithful servitor.
The count now pulled the chain, and the boots and spurs of the man on
duty sounded on the stone steps of a spiral staircase, placed in the
tall tower which flanked the western corner of the chateau on the ocean
side.

When the count heard the steps of his retainer he pulled back the rusty
bolts which protected the door leading from the gallery to the tower,
admitting into the sanctuary of learning a man of arms whose stalwart
appearance was in keeping with that of his master. This man, scarcely
awakened, seemed to have walked there by instinct; the horn lantern
which he held in his hand threw so feeble a gleam down t