Bernardy went out into the sunlight feeling at once calmed and exhilarated, yet still with that odd sense of waiting, as of something holding its breath. All the afternoon he haunted the little wind-swept town, and towards evening he leant upon the parapet that hung over the sheer mountain-side. Hundreds of feet below him the valley was lapped in darkness and he watched the shadow thrown by the opposite range creep up towards him, the edge of it in deeply curved waves, like a purple tide. The chill of sunset was in the air when he made his way to the inn, and he noted that, although the sight of a stranger must be of the utmost rarity, he excited no comment. Could it be, he wondered, that they instinctively knew him for one of themselves, these people of his dream-city, or were they dreams too? In how leisurely a manner they passed along the streets--the Faun-like youths, brown-necked and bold-eyed; the firm-set women with their black hair so sleekly and heavily massed about their heads that it seemed carved out of ebony, and the quiet-eyed old people with indrawn mouths! When he reached the inn, a grey pile of round-flanked towers that was built on the eastern edge, his memories awoke again, and in the courtyard they surged over him--memories of sitting enthroned in just such a castle as this. He remembered, too, that there had always been something he was not allowed to know--was it a door that had been kept locked, or a forbidden book, or some hidden person whom he had perpetually tried to meet and never succeeded? Whatever it was, he felt he would soon discover it. Nothing occurred to stimulate his memory during supper. The stout patronne chatted to him of her inn, which had been the Seigneur's chateau till thirty years before, when the last owner died in great poverty. Had Monsieur seen and admired the beautiful crèche in the church? The little figures were the dolls which once belonged to Mademoiselle de Clerissac. The patronne was not old enough to remember it very distinctly, but she believed Mademoiselle had met with trouble, which was why she went away. After all, it was natural, she had red blood in her, both the old Seigneur and his father having married peasant girls. If Monsieur was interested in such things old Marie, who had been Mademoiselle de Clerissac's nurse, still lived in a room in the chateau. She was fabulously old, and had to be tended like a baby by her granddaughter, and it was true she had long wandered in her wits, but undoubtedly she could see visions, both of the past and future. No, Bernardy not only felt no interest in the actual history of the place, but even shrank from knowledge. It seemed to make his dream-city less dream-like and less his.