had made in another part of the
courtyard, and by certain corridors which they had walled up to save the
trouble of looking after them, I reached the room without recognising
anything; indeed, I could not have said in what part of the old
buildings I was, to such an extent had the new appearance of the
courtyard upset my recollections, and so little had my mind in its gloom
and agitation been impressed by surrounding objects.

While the servant was lighting the fire, I threw myself into a chair,
and, burying my head in my hands, fell into a melancholy train of
thought. My position, however, was not without a certain charm; for the
past naturally appears in an embellished or softened form to the minds
of young men, those presumptuous masters of the future. When, by dint of
blowing the brand, the servant had filled the room with dense smoke, she
went off to fetch some embers and left me alone. Marcasse had remained
in the stable to attend to our horses. Blaireau had followed me;
lying down by the hearth, he glanced at me from time to time with a
dissatisfied air, as if to ask me the reason of such wretched lodging
and such a poor fire.

Suddenly, as I cast my eyes round the room, old memories seemed to
awaken in me. The fire, after making the green wood hiss, sent a flame
up the chimney, and the whole room was illumined with a bright
though unsteady light, which gave all the objects a weird, ambiguous
appearance. Blaireau rose, turned his back to the fire and sat down
between my legs, as if he thought that something strange and unexpected
was going to happen.

I then realized that this place was none other than my grandfather
Tristan's bed-room, afterward occupied for several years by his eldest
son, the detestable John, my cruelest oppressor, the most crafty and
cowardly of the Hamstringers. I was filled with a sense of terror and
disgust on recognising the furniture, even the very bed with twisted
posts on which my grandfather had given up his blackened soul to God,
amid all the torments of a lingering death agony. The arm-chair which I
was sitting in was the one in which John the Crooked (as he was pleased
to call himself in his facetious days) used to sit and think out his
villainies or issue his odious orders. At this moment I thought I saw
the ghosts of all the Mauprats passing before me, with their bloody
hands and their eyes dulled with wine. I got up and was about to yield
to the horror I felt by taking to fl