rom it, like those of
cells in a convent; a resemblance which our young hero, who recollected,
with much ennui, an early specimen of a monastic life, was far from
admiring. The host paused at the very end of the gallery, selected a key
from the large bunch which he carried at his girdle, opened the door,
and showed his guest the interior of a turret chamber; small, indeed,
but which, being clean and solitary, and having the pallet bed and
the few articles of furniture, in unusually good order, seemed, on the
whole, a little palace.

"I hope you will find your dwelling agreeable here, fair sir," said the
landlord. "I am bound to pleasure every friend of Maitre Pierre."

"Oh, happy ducking!" exclaimed Quentin Durward, cutting a caper on
the floor, so soon as his host had retired: "Never came good luck in a
better or a wetter form. I have been fairly deluged by my good fortune."

As he spoke thus, he stepped towards the little window, which, as the
turret projected considerably from the principal line of the building,
not only commanded a very pretty garden of some extent, belonging to the
inn, but overlooked, beyond its boundary, a pleasant grove of those
very mulberry trees which Maitre Pierre was said to have planted for
the support of the silk worm. Besides, turning the eye from these more
remote objects, and looking straight along the wall, the turret of
Quentin was opposite to another turret, and the little window at which
he stood commanded a similar little window in a corresponding projection
of the building. Now, it would be difficult for a man twenty years older
than Quentin to say why this locality interested him more than either
the pleasant garden or the grove of mulberry trees; for, alas! eyes
which have been used for forty years and upwards, look with indifference
on little turret windows, though the lattice be half open to admit the
air, while the shutter is half closed to exclude the sun, or perhaps
a too curious eye--nay, even though there hang on the one side of the
casement a lute, partly mantled by a light veil of sea green silk. But,
at Durward's happy age, such accidents, as a painter would call them,
form sufficient foundation for a hundred airy visions and mysterious
conjectures, at recollection of which the full grown man smiles while he
sighs, and sighs while he smiles.

As it may be supposed that our friend Quentin wished to learn a little
more of his fair neighbour, the owner of the lute and