lier and he
wrapped themselves in their mantles, and went toward the Palais Royal;
they had, it will be remembered, to examine the ground. The house in
which Madame de Sabran lived, since her husband had been named maitre
d'hotel to the regent, was No. 22, between the Hotel de la Roche-Guyon
and the passage formerly called Passage du Palais Royal, because it was
the only one leading from the Rue des Bons Enfants to the Rue de Valois.
This passage, now called Passage du Lycee, was closed at the same time
as the other gates of the garden; that is to say, at eleven o'clock in
the evening; therefore, having once entered a house in the Rue des Bons
Enfants, unless it had a second door opening on the Rue de Valois, no
one could return to the Palais Royal after eleven o'clock without making
the round, either by the Rue Neuve des Petits-Champs, or by the Cour des
Fontaines.

Thus it was with Madame de Sabran's house; it was an exquisite little
hotel, built toward the end of the last century, some five-and-twenty
years before, by a merchant who wished to ape the great lords and have a
petite maison of his own. It was a one-storied house, with a stone
gallery, on which the servants' attics opened, and surmounted by a low
tilted roof. Under the first-floor windows was a large balcony which
jutted out three or four feet, and extended right across the house; but
some iron ornaments, similar to the balcony, and which reached to the
terrace, separated the two windows on each side from the three in the
center, as is often done when it is desired to interrupt exterior
communications. The two facades were exactly similar, only, as the Rue
de Valois was eight or ten feet lower than that of the Bons Enfants, the
ground-floor windows and door opened on a terrace, where was a little
garden, filled in spring with charming flowers, but which did not
communicate with the street, the only entrance being, as we have said,
in the Rue des Bons Enfants.

This was all our conspirators could wish; the regent, once entered into
Madame de Sabran's house, would--provided he stayed after eleven
o'clock, which was probable--be taken as in a trap, and nothing would be
easier than to carry out their plan in the Rue des Bons Enfants, one of
the most deserted and gloomy places in the neighborhood; moreover, as
this street was surrounded by very suspicious houses, and frequented by
very bad company, it was a hundred to one that they would not pay any
attentio