appeared and gruffly
demanded what she wanted. "I must speak to Bastide Grammont," she
declared. The man made a face as if a demented person had waylaid him,
growled in a threatening tone and was about to bang the door in her
face. Clarissa clutched his arm with one hand, and tore the diamond
brooch from her breast with the other. "There, there, there!" she
stammered. The old man raised his lantern and examined the sparkling
jeweled ornament on all sides. Clarissa misinterpreted his grinning,
anxious joy, thought he was not satisfied, and gave him her purse into
the bargain, "What is in the basket?" he inquired respectfully but
suspiciously. She showed him what it contained. He contented himself
with that, thought she was most likely the mistress of the condemned
man, and, upon locking the door, walked on in front of her. They
descended a few steps, then crossed a narrow passage. "How long do you
wish to stay inside?" asked the keeper, when they had reached an iron
door. Clarissa drew a deep breath and replied in a whisper that she
would give three knocks on the door. The old man nodded, said he would
wait at the head of the stairs, opened the door cautiously, handed the
woman his lantern and locked the door behind her.

Inside Clarissa clung to the wall to give her riotous pulses time to
subside. The room seemed moderately large and not altogether
uninhabitable. Bastide lay on a pallet along the opposite wall, asleep
and fully dressed. "What a stillness!" thought Clarissa shuddering, and
stole softly to the bedside of the sleeping man. What quiet in that
countenance, too, what a beautiful slumber, thought she, and her lips
parted in mute sorrow. She placed the lantern on the floor where its
light would strike his face, then she knelt down and listened to his
steady breathing. Bastide's mouth was firmly closed, his eyelids were
motionless, a sign of dreamlessness; his long beard encircled cheeks
and chin like brown brushwood, his head was thrown slightly backward,
and his hair shone with a moist gleam. Gradually the peace of his
countenance passed into Clarissa too; all words, all signs which she
had brought with her vanished, she determined to do nothing more than
place her gift by his bed and depart. Accordingly she emptied the
basket, and started and paused every time she heard but a grain of sand
crunch under her feet. When she had laid out all the fruit and passed
her hand tenderly over each, she grew more and more