'I went myself,' she said, 'to that touching Adoration of the Holy Sacrament at the Capuchin Chapel last evening, and poor Zéphirin was there with a few schoolfellows--those who took their first Communion this year. He edified us all, he looked a little angel.' 'My son Victor did not go, for he is only nine years old,' Madame Edouard answered. 'But did Zéphirin go alone? Did nobody bring him back?' 'Oh! the chapel is only a few yards distant,' the schoolmistress explained. 'I know that Brother Gorgias had orders to escort the children whose parents could not attend, and whose homes are rather distant. But Madame Simon asked me to watch over Zéphirin, and it was I who brought him back. He was very gay; he opened the shutters, which were simply pushed to, and sprang into his room through the open window, laughing and saying that it was the easiest and shortest way. I stayed outside for a moment, waiting until he had lighted his candle.' Marc, drawing near, had listened attentively. 'What time was it?' he now inquired. 'Exactly ten,' Mademoiselle Rouzaire replied. 'St. Martin's clock was striking.' The others shuddered, moved by that account of the lad springing so gaily into the room where he was to meet such a tragic death. And Madame Alexandre gently gave expression to a thought which suggested itself to all: 'It was hardly prudent to let the lad sleep by himself in this lonely room, so easily reached from the square. The shutters ought to have been barred at night.' 'Oh! he fastened them,' said Mademoiselle Rouzaire. 'Did he do so last night while you were here?' inquired Marc, intervening once more. 'No, when I left him to go to my rooms he had lighted his candle and was arranging some pictures on his table, with the window wide open.' Mignot, the assistant-master, now joined in the conversation. 'This window made Monsieur Simon anxious,' he said; 'he wished he could have given the lad another room. He often recommended him to fasten the shutters carefully. But I fear that the child paid little heed.' The two clerics in their turn had now decided to quit the room. Father Philibin, after laying the number of _Le Petit Beaumontais_ and the copy-slip on the table, had ceased speaking, preferring to look and listen; and he followed very attentively each word and gesture that came from Marc, while Brother Fulgence, for his part, continued to relieve himself with lamentations. Eventually, the Jesuit, who seemed to read the young schoolmaster's thoughts in his eyes, remarked to him: 'So you think that some tramp, some night prowler, seeing the boy alone in this room, may have got in by the window?'