“I am not a bit of a coward,” answered Serafina laughingly, “and will do my best to reassure this timid little Isabelle. As to our duenna,—she is something of a sorceress herself, and if the devil in person should make his appearance he would meet his match in her.” The baron then took a light in his hand and showed the three ladies the way into the bed-chamber, which certainly did strike them rather unpleasantly at first sight, and looked very eerie in the dim, flickering light of the one small lamp. “What a capital scene it would make for the fifth act of a tragedy,” said Serafina, as she looked curiously about her, while poor little Isabelle shivered with cold and terror. They all crept into bed without undressing, Isabelle begging to lie between Serafina and Mme. Léonarde, for she felt nervous and frightened. The other two fell asleep at once, but the timid young girl lay long awake, gazing with wide-open, straining eyes at the door that led into the shut-up apartments beyond, as if she dreaded its opening to admit some unknown horror. But it remained fast shut, and though all sorts of mysterious noises made her poor little heart flutter painfully, her eyelids closed at last, and she forgot her weariness and her fears in profound slumber. In the other room the pedant slept soundly, with his head on the table, and the tyrant opposite to him snored like a giant. Matamore had rolled himself up in a cloak and made himself as comfortable as possible under the circumstances in a large arm-chair, with his long, thin legs extended at full length, and his feet on the fender. Leander slept sitting bolt upright, so as not to disarrange his carefully brushed hair, and de Sigognac, who had taken possession of a vacant arm-chair, was too much agitated and excited by the events of the evening to be able to close his eyes. The coming of two beautiful, young women thus suddenly into his life—which had been hitherto so isolated, sad and dreary, entirely devoid of all the usual pursuits and pleasures of youth—could not fail to rouse him from his habitual apathy, and set his pulses beating after a new fashion. Incredible as it may seem yet it was quite true that our young hero had never had a single love affair. He was too proud, as we have already said, to take his rightful place among his equals, without any of the appurtenances suitable to his rank, and also too proud to associate familiarly with the surrounding peasantry, who accorded him as much respect in his poverty as they had ever shown to his ancestors in their prosperity. He had no near relatives to come to his assistance, and so lived on, neglected and forgotten, in his crumbling château, with nothing to look forward to or hope for. In the course of his solitary wanderings he had several times chanced to encounter the young and beautiful Yolande de Foix, following the hounds on her snow-white palfrey, in company with her father and a number of the young noblemen of the neighbourhood.