They raised their eyes. This time they felt certain that the last act was at hand, or at least one of the scenes of the last act. The roof to them was the framed skylight which occupied the center of the ceiling and admitted the only daylight that entered the room. And still the same agonizing question rose to their minds: what was going to happen? Would the enemy show his face outside the skylight and reveal himself at last? This work on the roof continued for a considerable time. Footsteps shook the zinc sheets that covered it, moving between the right-hand side of the house and the edge of the skylight. And suddenly this skylight, or rather a part of it, a square containing four panes, was lifted, a very little way, by a hand which inserted a stick to keep it open. And the enemy again walked across the roof and went down the side of the house. They were almost disappointed and felt such a craving to know the truth that Patrice once more fell to breaking the boards of the wainscoting, removing the last pieces, which covered the end of the inscription. And what they read made them live the last few minutes all over again. The enemy's return, the rustle against the walls and the walled windows, the noise on the roof, the opening of the skylight, the method of supporting it: all this had happened in the same order and, so to speak, within the same limit of time. Patrice's father and Coralie's mother had undergone the same impressions. Destiny seemed bent on following the same paths and making the same movements in seeking the same object. And the writing went on: "He is going up again, he is going up again. . . . There's his footsteps on the roof. . . . He is near the skylight. . . . Will he look through? . . . Shall we see his hated face? . . ." "He is going up again, he is going up again," gasped Coralie, nestling against Patrice. The enemy's footsteps were pounding over the zinc. "Yes," said Patrice, "he is going up as before, without departing from the procedure followed by the other. Only we do not know whose face will appear to us. Our parents knew their enemy." She shuddered at her image of the man who had killed her mother; and she asked: "It was he, was it not?" "Yes, it was he. There is his name, written by my father." Patrice had almost entirely uncovered the inscription. Bending low, he pointed with his finger: "Look. Read the name: Essarès. You can see it down there: it was one of the last words my father wrote." And Coralie read: "The skylight rose higher, a hand lifted it and we saw . . . we saw, laughing as he looked down on us--oh, the scoundrel--Essarès! . . . Essarès! . . . And then he passed something through the opening, something that came down, that unrolled itself in the middle of the room, over our heads: a ladder, a rope-ladder.