The Norman now approached, and soon convincing himself that Louise was right, he took her in his arms and gave her a kiss that made the ruin echo. The next thing was to get into the drawer, or whatsoever it was, that occupied the interior of the table; but this not proving very easy, the impatient Norman set it upright upon one end, and drawing his sword, soon contrived to cleave it through the middle; when, to the delight of the eyes that looked upon it, appeared a large cavity neatly wrought in the wood, containing a packet of vellum folded, and sealed at all corners in blue and yellow wax, with neat pieces of floss-silk to keep it all together. The Norman could have eaten it up; and Louise, with a degree of impatient curiosity peculiarly her own, was already fingering one of the seals, about to break it open, when Marteville stopped her with a tremendous oath. "What are you going to do?" cried he: "you know little what it is to pry into State secrets. If you had opened that seal, instead of having perhaps a reward of twenty thousand crowns, we should both have been sent to the Bastille for the rest of our lives." Louise dropped the packet in dismay; and the Norman continued, "Did you never hear of the Abbé de Langy, who happening to be left by Monsieur de Richelieu in his private cabinet only for five minutes, with some State papers on the table, was sent to the Bastille for twelve years, merely for fear he had read them? No, no; this must go to Monsieur Chavigni without so much as cracking the wax." "Could not we just look in at the end?" demanded Louise, looking wistfully at the packet, which her husband had now picked up. But upon this he put a decided negative; and having now succeeded to his heart's content, the burly Norman, in the exuberance of his joy, began singing and capering till the old pile both echoed and shook with his gigantic gambols. "_Ma Louise_," cried he at length, "_vous êtes fatiguée. Je vais vous porter_;" and catching her up in his arms, notwithstanding all remonstrance, he carried her like a feather into the court-yard, through the narrow arch, and threading all the intricacies of the vaults with the same sagacious facility with which a ferret glides through the windings of a warren, he bore her safely and in triumph into the _salle à manger_ of the honourable fraternity below. This was not the mode of progression which Louise most admired, nor was she very much gratified at being exhibited to her husband's old friends in so ungraceful an attitude; and the consequences, of course, were, that she would willingly have torn his eyes out had she dared.