"I am ready," I cried, rising gaily. "If I were not I should be a recreant indeed. But I think, Madame, that you were going to tell me your name." "I am Madame Catinot," she answered. And then--I do not know what she read in my face, "I am a widow," she added, blushing deeply. "For the rest you are no wiser." "But always at your service, Madame." "So be it," she answered quietly. "I will meet you, M. le Vicomte, in the hall, if you will presently descend thither." I held the door for her to go out, and she went; and wondering, and inexpressibly puzzled by the strangeness of the adventure, I paced up and down the room a minute, and then followed her. A hanging lamp which lit the hall showed her to me standing at the foot of the stairs; her hair hidden by a black lace mantilla, her dress under a cloak of the same dark colour. The man who had admitted me gave me in silence my cloak and hat; and without a word Madame led the way along a passage. Over a door at the end of the passage was a second light. It fell on my hat--as I was about to put it on--and I started and stood. Instead of the tricolour I had been wearing in the hat, I saw a small red cockade! Madame heard me stop, and turning, discovered what was the matter. She laid her hand on my arm; and the hand trembled. "For an hour, Monsieur, only for an hour," she breathed in my ear. "Give me your arm." Somewhat agitated--I began to scent danger and complications--I put on the hat and gave her my arm, and in a moment we stood in the open air in a dark, narrow passage between high walls. She turned at once to the left, and we walked in silence a hundred, or a hundred and fifty, paces, which brought us to a low-browed doorway on the same side, through which a light poured out. Madame guiding me by a slight pressure, we passed through this, and a narrow vestibule beyond it; and in a moment I found myself, to my astonishment, in a church, half full of silent worshippers. Madame enjoined silence by laying her finger on her lip, and led the way along one of the dim aisles, until we came to a vacant chair beside a pillar. She signed to me to stand by the pillar, and herself knelt down. Left at liberty to survey the scene, and form my conclusions, I looked about me like a man in a dream. The body of the church, faintly lit, was rendered more gloomy by the black cloaks and veils of the vast kneeling crowd that filled the nave and grew each moment more dense. The men for the most part stood beside pillars, or at the back of the church; and from these parts came now and then a low stern muttering, the only sound that broke the heavy silence. A red lamp burning before the altar added one touch of sombre colour to the scene.