Dazed with what he had heard, Elphinston obeyed him, and slowly they went through the gloomy passages and up more stairs through iron-plated doors, until they stood at the one which opened into the _calotte_ of the tower above the chapel--so called because, being the topmost chamber in the roof, it resembled a _calotte_, or fool's cap, or extinguisher. "Messieurs," said the Lieutenant to the inmates of the room when the door had been unlocked and unbarred, "allow me to present to you a comrade. Let me trust you will be agreeable to each other. Monsieur de Chevagny, you are the father of the house; I commit him to you." Then, glancing over to a bed in the corner, on which a dark-haired man lay sleeping with his face turned to the wall, the Lieutenant shrugged his shoulders and said, "_Mon Dieu! le fou_ sleeps heavily. Well, we need not disturb him. No presentations are necessary with him." The man addressed as Chevagny--whom Bertie could not but regard with interest, despite the whirl in which his brain was at the strange, inexplicable revelations of the Lieutenant--rose with courtesy from a chair as his name was mentioned, and, coming towards Bertie, held out a thin hand. His hair was snow-white and of great length, while his face, partly from age and partly, perhaps, from long confinement, was shrivelled and wan. What his clothes might have originally been it was impossible to guess; now they were a mass of rags and tatters, patched in some places, in others hanging in shreds. Round his neck he wore for a cravat the sleeve of an old shirt; while the soles of his shoes, which were full of holes, were joined to the upper parts by pieces of pack thread. All over his face there grew a great beard as white as the hair on his head, and this may have helped to keep him warm, especially as over his breast it was tucked inside a shirt that was almost black from long wear. Yet, with all this ragged misery, those features of his face which his hair and beard allowed to be seen were refined and elegant, were the features of a well-born man. "Sir," he said to Bertie as he held out his hand, "what there is here I welcome you to, and I can only pray that it may not be your lot to grow as familiar with this place as I have become. For now--now--" and Bertie could see his old lips tremble as he spoke, "this place has grown through my unhappiness to be the only spot on earth that I know of--my only home." "Monsieur le Marquis," said Bertie, "for your greeting, sad as it is and sad as is the spot where we meet, I thank you. So long as I am here--so long!--I shall respect and pity you." He had taken no heed of the figure on the bed while he was speaking, having, indeed, his back turned to it, but now it forced him to observe it. For, as he spoke for the first time, that figure--its wild eyes staring as though about to start from its head, and its hands opening and shutting convulsively--was kneeling on the bed, muttering, whining, gasping behind him.