"Do you remember," she said, "how Lucy Snow reached the city alone and at night?--how a young English stranger conducted her across the park, she following in his footsteps through the darkness, and hearing only the tramp, tramp, before her, and the drip of the rain as it fell from the soaked leaves? This must be the park." When we had passed beyond its limits, we espied a little square, only a kind of alcove in the street, in the centre of which was the statue of some military hero. Behind it a quadruple flight of broad stone steps led down into a lower and more quiet street. Facing us, as we looked down, was a white stuccoed house, with a glimpse of a garden at one side. "See!" exclaimed Axelle, joyfully; "I believe this is the very place. Don't you remember when they had come out from the park, and Lucy's guide left her to find an inn near by, she ran,--being frightened,--and losing her way, came at last to a flight of steps like these, which she descended, and found, instead of the inn, the _pensionnat_ of Madame Beck?" Only the superior discretion and worldly wisdom of the others prevented Axelle from following in Lucy Snow's footsteps, and settling the question of identity then and there. As it was, we went on to the library, a stuffy little place, with a withered old man for sole attendant, who, seated before a table in the back shop, was poring over an old book. We darted in, making a bewildering flutter of wings, and pecked him with a dozen questions at once, oddly inflected: "_Was_ the scene of _Villette_ laid in Brussels?" and "_Is_ the school really here?" and "You _don't_ say so!" though we had insisted upon it from the first, and he had just replied in the affirmative; lastly, "O, _do_ tell us how we may find it." "You must go so-and-so," he said at length, when we paused. "Yes," we replied in chorus; "we have just come from there." "And," he went on, "you will see the statue of General Beliard." We nudged each other significantly. "Go down the steps in the rear, and the house facing you--" "We knew it. We felt it," we cried, triumphantly; and his directions ended there. We neither heeded nor interpreted the expression of expectation that stole over his face. We poured out only a stream of thanks which should have moistened the parched sands of his soul, and then hastened to retrace our steps. We found the statue again. We descended into the narrow, noiseless street, and stood,--an awe-struck group,--before the great square house, upon the door-plate of which we read,-- "PENSIONNAT DE DEMOISELLES. HÉGER--PARENT." "Now," said Axelle, when we had drawn in with a deep breath, the satisfaction and content which shone out again from our glad eyes, "we will ring the bell." "You will not think of it," gasped the choir of startled girls.