"This is a new building," replied Bertie; "is it not possible the present owner may have removed the old one to make way for this?" "Yes, yes," De Chevagny whispered--"yes, it is forty-five years ago. I should have remembered. Forty-five years ago. And sixty since I played under the cedars in the garden. My God!" The hackney carriage rolled along slowly, for in this old-fashioned street the road, like so many in Paris in those days, was far from good, and a slight thaw had now set in which rendered it particularly heavy. Then, looking out, the marquis pointed to an antique mansion the roofs of which could be seen behind the walls. "See," he said excitedly, "see, it is the house of De Montpouillan, the man whom the King delighted to honour! I was at a ball there three nights before I was taken, and he--Louis, the Grand Monarque--was there too. He danced in the ballet[9] with the daughter of St. Hillaire, a blonde whose hair shone like the gold of a new _Louis d'or_. _Mon Dieu!_ observe--there is a hatchment over the house. Someone is dead." Again Bertie tried to soothe him by reminding him that, whomsoever it might be, he could scarcely have known them after his long and terrible absence; yet this consolation, unhappy as it was, only served to remind him of his own sad fate and to set him once more murmuring, "Forty-five years!" But a moment afterwards he gave a gasp--a cry, indeed--and exclaimed: "My house! my house! See, see, it is there!" and called feebly to the driver to stop. Above the walls Bertie could perceive the red tiles of a long, low hotel; could observe also that in many places some of those tiles had fallen away and left great gaps yawning; and also that the whole gave signs of being in a ruinous condition. The huge, double wooden gates hung loosely on their hinges, while one or two beams in them bulged inward from rottenness and the lock, once large and handsome and a triumph of the smith's art, was rusted and almost fallen from its wooden socket. "Alas! alas!" thought Elphinston to himself, "it is not here that he will find his wife or child. He must look farther for them--perhaps in heaven!--who knows? Poor De Chevagny--poor, unhappy man!" There hung a great iron bell-handle on the side of the vast door, and the marquis, grasping it, rang a peal that could be heard echoing in the house itself across the courtyard--a peal that met with no response. Then they waited for a minute or two, the marquis leaning on Bertie's arm and gazing up wistfully into his face, as though seeking to read therein what his thoughts might be, and the driver staring over the wall at the unshuttered and uncurtained windows. "_Mon Dieu!_" the man muttered to himself so that they could not hear him, "after having dwelt in the _palais des grenouilles_[10] so long, it is not strange if the master is no more expected," and he cracked his whip vigorously as though hoping, perhaps, to thereby attract some attention from within.