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Updated: July 5, 2025
"Is the Countess de St. Alyre." "Yes; but I fancy we may say something more? She has attributes?" "Three, Monsieur, three, at least most amiable." "Ah! And what are they?" "Youth, beauty, and diamonds." I laughed. The sly old gentleman was foiling my curiosity. "I see, my friend," said I, "you are reluctant " "To quarrel with the Count," he concluded. "True.
I heard a sound like the slow tread of two persons walking up the flagged aisle. A faint echo told of the vastness of the place. I found that I could neither speak nor move. I was horribly frightened. The two people who approached now emerged from the darkness. One, the Count de St. Alyre, glided to the head of the figure and placed his long thin hands under it.
Alyre, his gold spectacles on his nose; his black wig, in oily curls, lying close to his narrow head, and showing like carved ebony over a repulsive visage of boxwood. His black muffler had been pulled down. His. right arm was in a sling.
Whatever contempt I might entertain for the dangers which this old lady so darkly intimated, it was by no means pleasant, you may suppose, that a secret so dangerous should be so much as suspected by a stranger, and that stranger a partisan of the Count de St. Alyre.
The inn-keeper himself kept the keys, and swore that he found them hung on the wall above his head, in his bed, in their usual place, in the morning; and that nobody could have taken them away without awakening him. That was all we could discover. The Count de St. Alyre, to whom this house belongs, was very active and very much chagrined. But nothing was discovered."
The Countess would scarcely have admitted this little romance to anyone; and the mask in the La Valliere costume could not possibly know who the masked domino beside her was. "I consent," I said, "I promise." "You must promise on the honor of a gentleman." "Well, I do; on the honor of a gentleman." "Then this lady is the Countess de St. Alyre."
She had scarcely set down my heavy box, which she seemed to have considerable difficulty in raising on the table, when the door of the room in which I had seen the coffin, opened, and a sinister and unexpected apparition entered. It was the Count de St. Alyre, who had been, as I have told you, reported to me to be, for some considerable time, on his way to Pee la Chaise.
"Quite sure, Monsieur, the Count de St. Alyre." "Do you see much of him in this part of the world?" "Not a great deal, Monsieur; he is often absent for a considerable time." "And is he poor?" I inquired. "I pay rent to him for this house. It is not much; but I find he cannot wait long for it," he replied, smiling satirically.
Nobody, but we two, knew that the inquirer was the Count de St. Alyre. I thought he was puzzled to find a subject for his next question; and, perhaps, repented having entangled himself in such a colloquy. If so, he was relieved; for the Marquis, touching his arms, whispered. "Look to your right, and see who is coming."
I fancied myself in a huge cathedral, without light, except from four tapers that stood at the corners of a raised platform hung with black, on which lay, draped also in black, what seemed to me the dead body of the Countess de St. Alyre. The little I saw bore the character of Gothic gloom, and helped my fancy to shape and furnish the black void that yawned all round me.
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