"Will you wait here for me a moment?" he said to his sister, "I want to ask one of the librarians a question. Why not come in with me, though," he added as an after-thought. "You have always wanted to see the manuscript scroll-work and that is in the same room. You would find it interesting, and I could get my information at the same time." Renee went up with her brother to the manuscript-room, and Henri took her to the end of a table, waited until the prayer-book he had asked for was brought, and then went to speak to a librarian in one of the window recesses. Renee turned over the leaves of her book slowly. Just behind her one of the employees was warming himself at the hot-air grating. Presently he was joined by another, who had just taken some volumes and some title-deeds to the desk near which Henri was talking, and Renee heard the following conversation just behind her: "I say, Chamerot, you see that little chap?" "Yes, at M. Reisard's desk." "Well, he can flatter himself that he's got hold of some information which isn't quite correct. He's come to ask whether there used to be a family named Villacourt, and whether the name has died out. They've told him that it has. Now if he'd asked me, I could have told him that some folks of that name must be living. I don't know whether it's the same family; but there was one of them there before I left that part of the world, and a strong, healthy fellow too--the eldest, M. Boisjorand--the proof is that we had a fight once, and that he knew how to give hard blows. Their place was quite near to where we lived. One of the turrets of their house could be seen above Saint-Mihiel, and from a good distance too; but it didn't belong to them in my time. They were a spendthrift lot, that family. Oh, they were queer ones for nobility; they lived with the charcoal-burners in the Croix-du-Soldat woods, at Motte-Noire, like regular satyrs." Saint-Mihiel, the Croix-du-Soldat woods, and Motte-Noire--all these names fixed themselves on Renee's memory and haunted her. "There, now I have what I wanted," said Henri, gaily, when he came back to her to take her away. XXVII Denoisel had left Renee at her piano, and had gone out into the garden. As he came back towards the house he was surprised to hear her playing something that was not the piece she was learning; then all at once the music broke off and all was silent. He went to the drawing-room, pushed the door open, and discovered Renee seated on the music-stool, her face buried in her hands, weeping bitterly. "Renee, good heavens! What in the world is the matter?" Two or three sobs prevented Renee's answering at first, and then, wiping her eyes with the backs of her hands, as children do, she said in a voice choked with tears: