I felt my way upstairs, making no noise, in my bare feet, and holding my breath, I was so afraid of giving the alarm to the people in the house, and of seeing that unfamiliar felicity which I burned to know elude my grasp. At last I reached the appointed place at the top of the stairs; I heard a faint cough and my heart told me that I was near Clairette. I found a door ajar, and by the light of a night lamp, I saw the little servant awaiting me. The girl wore nothing but a short petticoat and a jacket, evidently assuming that an elaborate toilet was not necessary in the mysteries of somnambulism; but no woman had ever seemed to me so bewitching, nor had I ever seen a woman look at me in such an expressive fashion. “I was waiting for you,” she said; “let’s go right on with the lesson your companion interrupted so unpleasantly; I am anxious to know how you are going to make me young!” “You don’t need to be made young,” I said; “all you need is to stay just as you are now.” “Yes, that’s what I meant. Let’s make haste. See, I’ll sit down and shut my eyes as I did before.” And without waiting for my reply, Clairette sat down on the foot of her bed, doubtless because the only chair in the room did not seem to her strong enough to stand our experiment in magnetism. I was careful not to urge my pupil to do otherwise, and I went at once and took my place by her side. I was too excited then to be timid; and Clairette, with her eyes still closed, contented herself with saying: “Oh! is that the way? is that what makes a person young? Why, Pierre and Jérôme have taught me as much already!” I had repeated my experiment several times and had fallen asleep in Clairette’s arms, when a great noise woke us both. The uproar seemed to come from the room beneath; we distinguished a confused murmur of voices, among others that of the inn-keeper, calling Clairette and shouting for a light. What was I to do? If the inn-keeper himself should come upstairs, where was I to hide? There was nothing in Clairette’s room large enough to hide me from her master’s eyes. The young woman pushed me from the room and begged me to save her from the anger of her employer, who did not propose that the servants in his inn should have weaknesses for others than himself. While she blew out her lamp and made a pretence of striking a light, I went downstairs with no very clear idea what I was going to say. I had no sooner reached the floor below than someone came to me, grasped my arm and whispered in my ear: “Play the sleep-walker; I had an attack of indigestion, I took our host’s bedroom for the cabinet, and a tureen containing soup-stock for a night vessel. Don’t be alarmed, I will get you out of the scrape.”