beam to the opposite house. But once there in a row
one behind the other with our faces to the wall, and the night air
blowing slantwise--well I am nervous on a height and I gasped. The
window was a good six feet above the beam, The casement--it was
unglazed--was open, veiled by a thin curtain, and alas! protected by
three horizontal bars--stout bars they looked.

Yet we were bound to get up, and to get in; and I was preparing to rise
to my feet on the giddy bridge as gingerly as I could, when Marie
crawled quickly over us, and swung himself up to the narrow sill, much
as I should mount a horse on the level. He held out his foot to me,
and making an effort I reached the same dizzy perch. Croisette for the
time remained below.

A narrow window-ledge sixty feet above the pavement, and three bars to
cling to! I cowered to my holdfasts, envying even Croisette. My legs
dangled airily, and the black chasm of the street seemed to yawn for
me. For a moment I turned sick. I recovered from that to feel
desperate. I remembered that go forward we must, bars or no bars. We
could not regain our old prison if we would.

It was equally clear that we could not go forward if the inmates should
object. On that narrow perch even Marie was helpless. The bars of the
window were close together. A woman, a child, could disengage our
hands, and then--I turned sick again. I thought of the cruel stones.
I glued my face to the bars, and pushing aside a corner of the curtain,
looked in.

There was only one person in the room--a woman, who was moving about
fully dressed, late as it was. The room was a mere attic, the
counterpart of that we had left. A box-bed with a canopy roughly
nailed over it stood in a corner. A couple of chairs were by the
hearth, and all seemed to speak of poverty and bareness. Yet the woman
whom we saw was richly dressed, though her silks and velvets were
disordered. I saw a jewel gleam in her hair, and others on her hands.
When she turned her face towards us--a wild, beautiful face, perplexed
and tear-stained--I knew her instantly for a gentlewoman, and when she
walked hastily to the door, and laid her hand upon it, and seemed to
listen--when she shook the latch and dropped her hands in despair and
went back to the hearth, I made another discovery I knew at once,
seeing her there, that we were likely but to change one prison for
another. Was every house in Paris then a dungeon? And did each roof
cov