Next moment I was at her knee, blubbering, with my nose rubbing the bombazine of her black skirt--for she was in mourning--and next moment little Eloise was in her room, looking just the same as ever, and I was being comforted as if all the misfortune were mine; and Madame Feliciani, for so she chose to be styled, was smiling for the first time, I am sure, since the disaster. A late déjeûner was brought in, and I was given a place at the table. It is all misty and strange in my mind. A few things of absolute unimportance stand out--the coat of the waiter, shiny at the elbows; the hotel dog that came in for scraps; the knives and forks, worn and second-rate--but of what we said to each other I remember nothing. "And you will come and see us?" said I as I took my departure. "Some day," replied the Countess, with a smile, the significance of which I now understand, as I understand the horrible mockery of my innocent invitation. Eloise ran down to see me off; and the last I saw of her was a small figure standing at the door of the hotel, and holding in its arms the black cat with the imperturbable yellow eyes. When we arrived at the Champs Elysées I was so frightened with my doings that I gave the driver the whole napoleon without waiting for change, and then I went to meet my doom like a man, and confessed the whole business to my father. The sentence was expulsion from Paris to the pavilion in the grounds of the Château de Saluce, whither, accordingly, I was transported next day with Joubert for a gaoler. CHAPTER XV THE PAVILION OF SALUCE Since my mother's death, my father had not lived in the château. He was too grand to let it, so it was placed in the hands of a caretaker. It was a gloomy house, dating from 1572, but the pavilion was the pleasantest place in the world. It was situated in the woods of the château, woods adjoining the forest of Sénart. It had six rooms, and was surrounded by a deep moat. A drawbridge gave access to it; and by touching a lever the drawbridge would rise; and you were as completely isolated from the world as though you were surrounded by a wall of iron. The water in the moat, fed by some unknown source, was very dark and still and deep, reflecting with photographic perfection the treetops of the wood and the fern-fronds of the bank. The water never varied in height, and, a strange thing, was rarely, even in the severest weather, covered with ice. It had a gloomy and secret look. "Joubert," I remember saying once, as I looked over the rail of the drawbridge at the reflections on the oily surface below, "has it ever drowned a man?" "Which?" asked Joubert. "The water."