But if the river slept, writhing and turning in its sleep as though ill dreams of drowned men plagued its rest, Paris was awake. But Paris never sleeps. It is a body possessed of many souls, many spirits--devils, some would say--and when slumber nurses one to quiet another rouses to carry on the fevered actions of its life. It is a forest of many beasts; those of the day couch to their rest at sunset, and in the same hour the prowlers of the night creep from their lairs, foul beasts of prey that love the darkness and thrive on deeds from which men hide their faces. The _pad_, _pad_, _pad_, of their stealthy feet may be heard in the byeways, the growling of their hunger, the crash of their spring. To and fro they wander, never satisfied, and seek their dens before the coming of dawn when the creatures of innocent labour awake to the burden of a new day. No! Paris never sleeps! The wakefulness was least to the east side where, beyond the Rue d'Hosterische, the Hotel de Bourbon sulked silent in its great square courtyard. There men both waked and slept, but waked watchful and on guard lest the prowling beast, desperate from famine, should spring at higher game than common. From the south, over the river, came a murmur as of bees, a murmur that hoarsened with the livelier play of the wind, as when one taps the hive, or fell away to a thin drone with the dying of the breeze. Westward, life was sharper, more individual, and with swift surprises, of which one came as I watched; the loud patter of running feet in the Rue Froid Mantel just beyond the fosse, a woman's scream, the roaring out of a rough oath, and dwindling sobs cut through and over-borne by a far-off drunken roysterer's mirthless song. But the obscure tragedy never moved me; a midge in a man's own eye is more hurt to him than a live coal in his neighbour's. Morning might have brought counsel, but that another small fret flecked the raw of my irritation, and kept the sore open--my borrowed finery had disappeared, and in its place lay the sorry garb, yet sorrier through travel, in which I had quitted Solignac. Clearly that was Monsieur de Commines' cynic response to my challenge of the night before, and was in itself a challenge. Seek Mademoiselle, will you! he said in his heart, grimly jesting, then seek her beggar-fashion, and if your tongue asks no hire for your sword's service your rags will hint an importunity. In the glimmering light of the Star of Flanders she may have taken you for a gentleman; go, if you will go, in the broad light of day, and let these rags speak for you!