In front of this dwelling I hesitated. This high barrack of plaster looked like a den for vagabonds, a hiding-place for suburban brigands. But he pushed forward a door which had not been locked, and made me go in before him. He led me forward by the shoulders, through profound darkness, towards a staircase where I had to feel my way with my hands and feet, with a well-grounded apprehension of tumbling into some gaping cellar. When I had reached the first landing, he said to me: "Go on up! 'Tis the sixth story." I searched my pockets, and, finding there a box of vestas, I lighted the way up the ascent. He followed me, puffing under his pack, repeating: "Tis high! 'tis high!" When we were at the top of the house, he drew forth from one of his inside pockets a key attached to a thread, and unlocking his door he made me enter. It was a little whitewashed room, with a table in the center, six chairs, and a kitchen-cupboard close to the wall. "I am going to wake up my wife," he said; "then I am going down to the cellar to fetch some wine; it doesn't keep here." He approached one of the two doors which opened out of this apartment, and exclaimed: "Bluette! Bluette!" Bluette did not reply. He called out in a louder tone: "Bluette! Bluette!" Then knocking at the partition with his fist, he growled: "Will you wake up in God's name?" He waited, glued his ear to the key-hole, and muttered, in a calmer tone: "Pooh! if she is asleep, she must be let sleep! I'll go and get the wine: wait a couple of minutes for me." He disappeared. I sat down and made the best of it. What had I come to this place for? All of a sudden, I gave a start, for I heard people talking in low tones, and moving about quietly, almost noiselessly, in the room where the wife slept. Deuce take it! Had I fallen into some cursed trap? Why had this woman--this Bluette--not been awakened by the loud knocking of her husband at the doorway leading into her room; could it have been merely a signal conveying to accomplices: "There's a mouse in the trap! I'm going to look out to prevent him escaping. 'Tis for you to do the rest!" Certainly, there was more stir than before now in the inner room; I heard the door opening from within. My heart throbbed. I retreated towards the further end of the apartment, saying to myself: "I must make a fight of it!" and, catching hold of the back of a chair with both hands, I prepared for a desperate struggle. The door was half opened, a hand appeared which kept it ajar; then a head, a man's head covered with a billycock hat, slipped through the folding-doors, and I saw two eyes staring hard at me. Then so quickly that I had not time to make a single movement by way of defense, the individual, the supposed criminal, a tall young fellow in his bare feet with his shoes in his hands, a good looking chap, I must admit--half a gentleman, in fact, made a dash for the outer door, and rushed down the stairs.