"And being there, Monsieur Hellewyl, you are where no gentleman should ever put himself." I shrugged my shoulders. For a man who knew the world so well Monsieur de Commines was going the wrong way about gaining his end. "To put myself right, then, I had best answer my own question; I shall see Mademoiselle--to-morrow." He only bowed, waited a second or two, then, saying carelessly that the hour was late, called a lackey to show me my quarters for the night, and we parted with constraint. Yes, Monsieur de Commines' lesson had gone too far. I do not say it was not deserved, but youth loves to think itself above laughter, and few things bite deeper through its sensitive skin than does a barbed jest. That I was not only a fool, but an ungrateful fool, I am now the first to admit. But a wound to self-esteem has this quality, it blinds as well as galls and I could see no farther than my temper. As I leaned out of the narrow window that overlooked the river, my indignation was too hot to be cooled by the night air, my irritation too raw to be soothed by the beauty or strangeness of the scene. And yet, to a man fresh from the outskirts of a Flanders wood, how much there was of beauty and strangeness. Underneath me, beyond the fosse, lay the garden, bordered on either side by the thin stream of the water that fed the moat; beyond that swept the river, broad and full and a-swirl with strength. Here it gloomed to blackness, there it flashed bright and smooth as steel where the moon caught the soundless slope of the currents as they met below Ile Notre Dame. To the left the Tour de Nesle rose on the further bank, black and sinister with its tradition of murder, the water lapping almost to its buttresses. Still farther to the left was the huge bulk of the Chateau Galliard; farther yet, and Notre Dame melted into the vapours of the night, lost against the background of the Ile des Vaches and Ile de Javiaux. Out of the vapours rose spires, towers, and sloping roofs innumerable, shining with dew or edged to a white effulgence as the full lustre of the moon glorified them.