I plucked the knife out and put it on the floor. Then I crawled into bed. As I lay thinking of the music, my restless fingers kept digging into holes in the sheet. Half a dozen holes, or rather slits, there were. One might have thought that the hunting-knife of Joubert had been furiously plunged again and again into the heap of bedclothes before being left sticking there. But I did not think of this: the knife was Joubert's. Besides, my head was alive with those dreams that stand at the door of sleep to welcome the innocent in. The forms of the weather-beaten musicians, sent like good angels from God to charm me and hold me with their music; the happy, innocent, and friendly face of the one who had smiled at me, and the hunting-song: Hark! amidst the bracken green Bells the buck whose vigil keeps Danger from the hind unseen, Danger from the fawn that sleeps. Then I, like a fawn, fell asleep, ignorant of Fate as the fawn, and of the extreme wickedness of the heart of man. CHAPTER IX THE FAIRY TALE "Levez-vous! Levez-vous! Levez-vous! Ta-ra-ra! Pom, pom! Hi! God's teeth, my knife! What does it here?" Joubert could sound the réveille with his mouth almost as well as a trumpeter, and he was grand at imitating the big drum. Up I shot in bed, rubbing my eyes. "Your what?" "My knife. Ha! I've caught you. Cutting your sticks and carving your name with my couteau de chasse! You have been to my bedroom. Don't answer me! You have been to my bedroom, and taken it from the pocket of my coat. A pretty thing!" Joubert's temper all yesterday had been savage; his infernal amours were not prospering, it seems. In fact, as I afterwards learned from his own lips, a scullion, resenting his addresses, had called him an old French dog without teeth. "It was sticking in my pillow when I came to bed!" cried I, indignant at the accusation. "Your pillow, when you came to bed!" Joubert seized me, ran me across the room by my shoulders to a large mirror, pointed to the reflection of my shrinking form, and yelled: "Do you see that?" "Mais, oui." "Then you see a liar." "But, Joubert----" "Not a word!" "But I want to _tell_ you----" "Not a word!" That was always Joubert's way--"Not a word." "But I want to _tell_ you!" "Not a word!" And he jabbed the sponge in my mouth, for I was standing by this time in the bath. I never could tell whether Joubert was joking or in earnest, so I said no more; but it was none the less irritating to be called a liar by Joubert, whose lies about battle, murder, and sudden death were palpable, and sometimes cynically self-confessed. Little Carl did not appear at breakfast, and Eloise was very despondent, not about Carl, but about going away. She would not touch jam, and she made use sometimes, in a secretive manner, of a handkerchief, small enough, goodness knows, yet chiefly composed of lace.