buhl table, whose head rocked as I passed, scarcely startled me.

The door of the Red Room and the steps up to it were in a shadowy

corner. I moved my candle from side to side in order to see clearly the

nature of the recess in which I stood, before opening the door. Here it

was, thought I, that my predecessor was found, and the memory of

that story gave me a sudden twinge of apprehension. I glanced over my

shoulder at the black Ganymede in the moonlight, and opened the door

of the Red Room rather hastily, with my face half turned to the pallid

silence of the corridor.

I entered, closed the door behind me at once, turned the key I found

in the lock within, and stood with the candle held aloft surveying the

scene of my vigil, the great Red Room of Lorraine Castle, in which the

young Duke had died; or rather in which he had begun his dying, for

he had opened the door and fallen headlong down the steps I had just

ascended. That had been the end of his vigil, of his gallant attempt to

conquer the ghostly tradition of the place, and never, I thought, had

apoplexy better served the ends of superstition. There were other

and older stories that clung to the room, back to the half-incredible

beginning of it all, the tale of a timid wife and the tragic end that

came to her husband's jest of frightening her. And looking round that

huge shadowy room with its black window bays, its recesses and alcoves,

its dusty brown-red hangings and dark gigantic furniture, one could

well understand the legends that had sprouted in its black corners, its

germinating darknesses. My candle was a little tongue of light in the

The Red Room