nsieur looking for his nightcap?"

Buvat was discovered--there was no means of escaping the danger, if
danger there was. He therefore drew his head from under the bed, took
his candle, and remaining on his knees, as a humble and beseeching
posture, he turned toward the individual who had just addressed him, and
found himself face to face with a man dressed in black, and carrying,
folded up on his arm, many articles, which Buvat recognized as human
clothes.

"Yes, monsieur," said Buvat, seizing the opening which was offered to
him, with a presence of mind on which he secretly congratulated himself;
"is that search forbidden?"

"Why did not monsieur, instead of troubling himself, ring the bell? I
have the honor to be appointed monsieur's valet-de-chambre, and I have
brought him a night-cap and night-shirt."

And with these words the valet-de-chambre spread out on the bed a
night-shirt, embroidered with flowers, a cap of the finest lawn, and a
rose-colored ribbon. Buvat, still on his knees, regarded him with the
greatest astonishment.

"Now," said the valet-de-chambre, "will monsieur allow me to help him to
undress?"

"No, monsieur, no," said Buvat, accompanying the refusal with the
sweetest smile he could assume. "No, I am accustomed to undress myself.
I thank you, monsieur."

The valet-de-chambre retired, and Buvat remained alone.

As the inspection of the room was completed, and as his increasing
hunger rendered sleep more necessary, Buvat began to undress, sighing;
placed--in order not to be left in the dark--a candle on the corner of
the chimney-piece, and sprang, with a groan, into the softest and
warmest bed he had ever slept on.

"The bed is not sleep," is an axiom which Buvat might, from experience,
have added to the list of his true proverbs. Either from fear or hunger,
Buvat passed a very disturbed night, and it was not till near morning
that he fell asleep; even then his slumbers were peopled with the most
terrible visions and nightmares. He was just waking from a dream that
he had been poisoned by a leg of mutton, when the valet-de-chambre
entered, and asked at what time he would like breakfast.

Buvat was not in the habit of breakfasting in bed, so he rose quickly,
and dressed in haste; he had just finished, when Messieurs Bourguignon
and Comtois entered, bringing the breakfast, as the day before they had
brought the dinner.

Then took place a second rehearsal of the scene which we have before