"Take a seat," he said, from customary habit.
Eight or ten folios lay tossed about on the floor; I formed a pile of them and sat down on the top.
"Yes," continued M. Villenave, "it was a very singular thing.... I fell asleep, the dusk came on and, in the meantime, my fire went out. You awoke me and found me in the dark, so I could not account for the noise inside my room; it was, no doubt, the draught from the passage that touched my face, but, in waking, I seemed to see something white, like a shroud, dancing before my eyes.... Curious, was it not?" went on M. Villenave, with a shiver, as though he felt cold through and through. "But here you are, so much the better!" And he held out his hand to me.
I responded to his courtesy, transferring to my left hand the letter I had brought him in my right.
"What have you there?" asked M. Villenave.
"Ah! pardon, I was forgetting ... it is a letter which Françoise gave me for you and that is the reason I disturbed you."
"Thanks ... Stop a minute, would you please feel about for a match? I am really quite bewildered still, and if I were superstitious I should believe I had had a presentiment."
He took the match I held out to him and lit it in the red embers on the hearth. Directly the match caught fire, we could distinguish objects in the room by its flickering light, faint though it was.
"Oh! good gracious!" I exclaimed suddenly, "what has happened to your beautiful pastel?"
"As you see, the glass and the frame are broken; I am waiting to send it to the glazier's and picture-framer's ... it was a most incomprehensible thing!"
"Did the nail come out, or the ring break?"
"Neither the one nor the other. The day before yesterday I was working all evening; when it reached a quarter to twelve, I was tired, but I still had to correct a proof of a handy little edition of my _Ovid._ I decided to combine rest and work by going to bed and correcting the proofs when I was in bed. So I lay down: I put my candle on the table by the bedside, and the light from it shone on the portrait of my poor friend; my glance followed the candlelight and I said good-night to the picture as usual.... A half-open window let in a little breeze which blew the flame of my candle about so that it seemed to me as though the portrait returned my good-night by bending its head as I had done! You will understand that I looked upon this movement as visionary and foolish; but, whether folly or a vision, my mind persisted in dwelling upon the movement, and the more I pondered over it, the more real the incident seemed; my eyes would stray from my _Ovid_, and fix themselves on that one point, the picture; my wandering thoughts would fly back, in spite of myself, to the days of my youth; and these early days passed before me one by one.... Ah me! I think I have told you that the original of that pastel occupied a good deal of my attention in those early days! So there I was, going at full tilt over old recollections of twenty-five years back; I addressed the copy as though the original could hear me, and my memory answered for her; it seemed as though the lips in the pastel moved; I thought the colours of the painting began to fade, and the expression on the face grew sad and unhappy.... Something like a smile of farewell passed over her lips; a tear came into her eyes ready to moisten the glass. Midnight began to strike; and, in spite of myself, I shivered--why, I could not tell! The wind blew, and, at the last stroke of midnight, while the clock was still vibrating, the half-open window opened wide violently, I heard a sigh like a groan, the eyes of the portrait closed, and the picture fell without either the nail that held it or the cord being broken; and my candle went out. I tried to light it again, but there was no fire in the grate, there were no matches on the chimneypiece; it was midnight, everybody in the house was asleep; so there was no way of obtaining a light. I shut my window again and I went back to bed.... Although I was not afraid, I felt much moved, I was sad, I had a great desire to weep; I thought I heard something pass through my room like the rustle of a silk dress.... I heard this noise three times so distinctly that I asked, 'Is there anyone there?' Finally, I fell asleep, very late, and the first thing I looked at when I woke again was my poor pastel, which I found in the state in which you now see it."