isappointed, I lay down upon my bed, when, casting my
eyes toward my dormer window, I saw the room opposite illuminated. So!
a traveler occupied the Green Room--fatal to strangers.

Now, all my fears were reawakened; the agitation of Fledermausse was
explained--she scented a new victim.

No sleep for me that night; the rustling of the straw, the nibbling of
the mice under the floor, gave me nervous chills.

I rose and leaned out of my window; I listened. The light in the room
opposite was extinguished. In one of those moments of poignant anxiety,
I cannot say if it was illusion or reality, I thought I saw the old
wretch also watching and listening.

The night passed, and the gray dawn came to my windows; by degrees the
noise and movements in the street ascended to my loft. Harassed by
fatigue and emotion I fell asleep, but my slumber was short, and by
eight o'clock I had resumed my post of observation.

It seemed as if the night had been as disturbed and tempestuous to
Fledermausse as to myself. When she opened the door of the gallery, I
saw that a livid pallor covered her cheeks and thin throat; she had on
only her chemise and a woolen skirt; a few locks of reddish gray hair
fell on her shoulders. She looked toward my hiding place with a dreamy,
abstracted air, but she saw nothing; she was thinking of other things.

Suddenly she descended, leaving her old shoes at the bottom of the
steps. "Without doubt," thought I, "she is going to see if the door
below is well fastened."

I saw her remount hastily, springing up three or four steps at a
time--it was terrible.

She rushed into the neighboring chamber, and I heard something like the
falling of the top of a great chest; then Fledermausse appeared in the
gallery, dragging a manikin after her, and this manikin was clothed
like the Heidelberg student.

With surprising dexterity the old woman suspended this hideous object
to a beam of the shed, then descended rapidly to the courtyard to
contemplate it. A burst of sardonic laughter escaped from her lips; she
remounted, then descended again like a maniac, and each time uttered
new cries and new bursts of laughter.

A noise was heard near the door, and the old woman bounded forward,
unhooked the manikin and carried it off; then, leaning over the
balustrade with her throat elongated, her eyes flashing, she listened
earnestly. The noise was lost in the distance, the muscles of her face
relaxed, and she drew long breat