I fancied, as I sat in the darkness astride of my beam, that I could see, closing the narrow vista of the street, the heavy mass of the Louvre; and that the murmur of voices and the tramp of men assembling came from its courts, with now and again the stealthy challenge of a sentry, the restrained voice of an officer.

Scarcely a wayfarer passed beneath me: so few, indeed, that I had no fear of being detected from below.

And yet unless I was mistaken, a furtive step, a subdued whisper were borne to me on every breeze, from every quarter.

And the night was full of phantoms.
Perhaps all this was mere nervousness, the outcome of my position.

At any rate I felt no more of it when Croisette joined me.