He did so until the hour of nine was striking from all the clocks in the city, when he was aroused by a clatter beneath his window not unlike that which, over night, had aroused Emérance from her meditations in front of the hearth in her salon. Yet this clatter on the cobble-stones of the _place_ heralded no such arrival as that which the woman had witnessed, no handsome travelling carriage escorted by soldiers and adventurers as represented by La Truaumont, Boisfleury, Fleur de Mai and even Humphrey himself; no descent at the inn of a beautiful woman whose wealth and position made her one of the foremost aristocrats in France, nor any pretty young girl such as Jacquette. Instead, the noise alone testified to, as Humphrey saw when he approached the window, the arrival of the French public coach which was, in truth, a vehicle something between the _patache_ of the time, the diligence of later days, and the various lumbering travelling-waggons of the period, while being a combination of all. A frouzy, evil-smelling, dirty thing it was, in which men and women were huddled together and even thrown into each other's arms and across each other's knees as the wheels of the cumbersome and almost springless vehicle jolted into ruts and then jolted out again, yet one in which travellers compassed hundreds of miles when too poor to pay for a carriage or to ride post--or when they desired to escape observation and remark! From this conveyance there stepped forth now, amidst the howls of the driver to his horses who were anxious to be unharnessed and reach their stalls, and the cries of the ostlers and other noises, a venerable-looking old man of about seventy whose head was still enveloped in the cloth in which he had bound it up over night for the journey. An old man who was received by the bowing landlord--the landlords of those days bowed appreciatively to all and every who arrived at their doors, no matter whether they were likely to spend one pistole or a hundred in their houses--with much courtesy. An old man who at once said:-- "I desire accommodation for some nights if it is obtainable. I desire also that Madame la Marquise de Villiers-Bordéville shall be informed that her father has arrived." "Her father!" the landlord exclaimed, perhaps in some astonishment at the difference in appearance, as well as in the mode of travelling, between this old man and his daughter, the illustrious Marquise who had arrived in a handsome coach. "The father of Madame la Marquise! But certainly, monsieur, madame shall be apprised. Though I fear she still sleeps. Nevertheless, her maidservant shall be told." "That will do very well. I myself require rest. Later in the day I will visit my daughter." After which the old man entered the house and, consequently, was seen no more by Humphrey West.