The marquis entered at once, M.
de Rosny followed, I brought up the rear; and the door was closed by a man who stood behind it.

We found ourselves crowded together at the foot of a very narrow staircase, which the doorkeeper--a stolid pikeman in a grey uniform, with a small lanthorn swinging from the crosspiece of his halberd--signed to us to ascend.

I said a word to him, but he only stared in answer, and M.de Rambouillet, looking back and seeing what I was about, called to me that it was useless, as the man was a Swiss and spoke no French.
This did not tend to reassure me; any more than did the chill roughness of the wall which my hand touched as I groped upwards, or the smell of bats which invaded my nostrils and suggested that the staircase was little used and belonged to a part of the castle fitted for dark and secret doings.
We stumbled in the blackness up the steps, passing one door and then a second before M.de Rambouillet whispered to us to stand, and knocked gently at a third.
The secrecy, the darkness, and above all the strange arrangements made to receive us, filled me with the wildest conjectures.

But when the door opened and we passed one by one into a bare, unfurnished, draughty gallery, immediately, as I judged, under the tiles, the reality agreed with no one of my anticipations.

The place was a mere garret, without a hearth, without a single stool.