It was that of Nicholas Barthes, who still lingered in the room above.

He seldom came downstairs, and scarcely ever ventured into the garden, for fear, said he, that he might be perceived and recognised from a distant house whose windows were concealed by a clump of trees.

One might laugh at the old conspirator's haunting thought of the police.

Nevertheless, the caged-lion restlessness, the ceaseless promenade of that perpetual prisoner who had spent two thirds of his life in the dungeons of France in his desire to secure the liberty of others, imparted to the silence of the little house a touching melancholy, the very rhythm as it were of all the great good things which one hoped for, but which would never perhaps come.
Very few visits drew the brothers from their solitude.

Bertheroy came less frequently now that Guillaume's wrist was healing.