At last the gray light of the dawn came creeping in through the lattice windows, speedily followed by the first bright rays from the rising sun.  The storm was over, and the glorious god of day rose triumphant in a perfectly clear sky.  It was a strange group that he peeped in upon, where the old family portraits seemed looking down with haughty contempt upon the slumbering invaders of their dignified solitude.  The soubrette was the first to awake, starting up as a warm sunbeam shone caressingly full upon her face.  She sprang to her feet, shook out her skirts, as a bird does its plumage, passed the palms of her hands lightly over her glossy bands of jet-black hair, and then seeing that the baron was quietly observing her, with eyes that showed no trace of drowsiness, she smiled radiantly upon him as she made a low and most graceful curtsey.

“I am very sorry,” said de Sigognac, as he rose to acknowledge her salute, “that the ruinous condition of this chateau, which verily seems better fitted to receive phantoms than real living guests, would not permit me to offer you more comfortable accommodations.  If I had been able to follow my inclinations, I should have lodged you in a luxurious chamber, where you could have reposed between fine linen sheets, under silken curtains, instead of resting uneasily in that worm-eaten old chair.”

“Do not be sorry about anything, my lord, I pray you,” answered the soubrette with another brilliant smile; “but for your kindness we should have been in far worse plight; forced to pass the night in the poor old chariot, stuck fast in the mud; exposed to the cutting wind and pelting rain.  We should assuredly have found ourselves in wretched case this morning.  Besides, this chateau which you speak of so disparagingly is magnificence itself in comparison with the miserable barns, open to the weather, in which we have sometimes been forced to spend the night, trying to sleep as best we might on bundles of straw, and making light of our misery to keep our courage up.”

While the baron and the actress were exchanging civilities the pedant’s chair, unable to support his weight any longer, suddenly gave way under him, and he fell to the floor with a tremendous crash, which startled the whole company.  In his fall he had mechanically seized hold of the table-cloth, and so brought nearly all the things upon it clattering down with him.  He lay sprawling like a huge turtle in the midst of them until the tyrant, after rubbing his eyes and stretching his burly limbs, came to the rescue, and held out a helping hand, by aid of which the old actor managed with some difficulty to scramble to his feet.

“Such an accident as that could never happen to Matamore,” said Herode, with his resounding laugh; “he might fall into a spider’s web without breaking through it.”

“That’s true,” retorted the shadow of a man, in his turn stretching his long attenuated limbs and yawning tremendously, “but then, you know, not everybody has the advantage of being a second Polyphemus, a mountain of flesh and bones, like you, or a big wine-barrel, like our friend Blazius there.”