I still, however, kept up my scrutiny of the attic window--observed closely every female foot that glanced about the neighboring courts, and remitted sadly my attention to the _Grammaire des Grammaires_, in the quiet room of my demure friend the abbe. Sometimes, in my fancies, the object of wonder was a young maiden of the _noblesse_, who, for imputed family crimes, had hid herself in so humble a quarter. Sometimes I pictured the occupant of the chamber as the suffering daughter of some miserly parent, with trace of noble blood--filial, yet dependent in her degradation. Sometimes I imagined her the daughter of shame--the beloved of a doating, and too late repentant mother--shunning the face of a world that had seduced her with its smiles, and that now made smiles the executioners of its punishment. In short, form what fancies I would, I could not but feel a most extraordinary interest in clearing the mystery that seemed to me to hang about the little window in the court. Unconnected with the foot-track and the slipper, the window on the court would have been nothing more than half the courts to be seen in the old quarters of Paris. Or, indeed, the delicate foot-prints, and articles of female luxury would have hardly caught attention, much less sustained it with so feverish curiosity, in any one of the courts opening upon the Rue de Rivoli, or Rue Lafitte. The concierge next door, I was persuaded, knew more of his inmates than he cared to say. I still, as I have said, glanced my eye, each morning, along the upper angles of the court, and sidled now and then by the gate of the neighboring hotel; but the window wore its usual look--there was the veil, and the placard, and the disjointed, rattling sash; and in the neighboring court was, sometimes, the tall gentleman picking his way carefully over the stones, and sometimes the stumpy figure of a waiting woman. Some ten days after my chat with the neighbor concierge, I reached the hotel of the abbe an hour earlier than my usual morning visit, and took the occasion to reconnoitre the adjoining courts. The concierge, my acquaintance of the week before, was busy with a bowl of coffee and a huge roll; and, just as I had sidled up to his box for a word with him, who should brush past in great apparent haste, but the pale, thin gentleman who had before attracted my observation. I determined to step around at once into the open corridor of the abbe's hotel, and see if I could detect any movement--so slight even as the opening or shutting of a door in the chamber of the narrow window.