As he walked away from the seed shop, Dian felt deeply grateful that he had become acquainted with the farmer’s boy, Raoul. He would be coming and going out of Paris every week. That in itself was something to remember. It was growing dark, and the shepherd walked slowly back by the way which he had taken earlier in the day with Raoul, past the Bois to the Saint Frère house. A small part of his task had already been accomplished. He had found the Saint Frère house. The next thing was to enter it. This would be an easy enough task if the comtesse were at home, but something told Dian that she was not. It was so dark by the time he reached its gates that he could see the house only vaguely. A fine sleet was falling, and there was something sad about the aspect of the whole place. Dian walked up the marble steps to the great iron door and pulled the silken cord. He heard a loud clang echoing through the great house, but, although he waited for a long time, no one opened the door. He went around to the side of the house which opened directly on to the dark, narrow side street which Marie Josephine had traversed with Gonfleur the night of the bal masqué. After groping about for a while in the dark, Dian found the door leading into the cellar. It was half open. He went inside, stepped over the logs of wood lying on the floor, crept up the steep, dark stairs, and found himself facing a long corridor. Dian always remembered that walk through the great, silent house. There was no sound anywhere at all, and there was no sign of any human being. The drawing-rooms, the great halls, and the wide stairways seemed never to have known the touch of human footsteps. In one of the smaller rooms, on a pillow of a velvet couch, he saw some needlework and a pair of scissors lying beside it. It looked as though the sewing had been carelessly thrown down, as indeed it had been when Great-aunt Hortense’s servant had come for the comtesse. Dian stood still in the center of the drawing-room and pondered. He looked at the inlaid mother-of-pearl table from which Humphrey had snatched the blue velvet covering to put about Rosanne, and at the wide hearth where Lisle and Rosanne had toasted the nuts that night a week ago, when so much had happened. Dian could not know of all this, but he worked things out in his mind. The house had not been taken over by the Republican soldiers. Of that he was convinced. Neville had told him of much that was happening, and he knew that he would have found some sign of occupation either by the mob or official authority.