The old flute in yellow wood was slightly cracked, which gave it a veiled sound, a delightfully reedy voice like that of a marquise of bygone times, still singing in the purest tones the minuets of her youth. One by one the notes would fly away, gently rustling their wings. It seemed that the song was being sung by Night herself, so closely did it mingle with the discreet breezes in the darkness.

Julien lived in fear that people in the neighbourhood might complain. But they are heavy sleepers out in the provinces. In any case, there were only two residents living in the Place des Quatre-Femmes: a lawyer, M. Savournin, and an old retired gendarme, Captain Pidoux, both of them no trouble as neighbours, in bed and asleep by nine. Julien was more worried about the people who lived in the noble dwelling known as the Hôtel de Marsanne, which rose on the other side of the square, its grey and gloomy façade as grim as a monastery’s, right opposite his windows. Five grass-grown steps led up to a round-arched front door, defended by enormous nail-heads. Ten window casements stretched along the house’s single upper floor, and their shutters opened and closed at the same times every day, without letting anyone see into the rooms, sheltered behind the thick curtains that were always closed. On the left, the tall chestnut trees in the garden formed a clump of greenery, its leaves swelling up to the ramparts. And this imposing town house, with its grounds, its sombre walls, its atmosphere of royal boredom, made Julien reflect that if the Marsanne family didn’t like the flute, they need certainly only say the word, and he would have to stop playing.

Moreover, the young man felt a sense of religious awe when he leaned out of his window and gazed at the vast extent of the garden and the buildings. The house was famous in this part of the world, and it was said that strangers came from miles around to visit it. And the wealth of the Marsannes was swathed in legend. For a long time, Julien had watched the ancient house, trying to fathom the mysteries of the all-powerful fortune it concealed. But in all the hours he spent there in absorbed contemplation, he never saw anything but the grey façade and the black clump of the chestnut trees. Never once did he see a soul go up the loose, wobbly steps, never once did the front door, green with moss, open. The Marsannes had blocked it up, the entrance was through an iron gate on the rue Sainte-Anne; in addition, at the far end of a narrow street, near the ramparts, there was a little gate onto the garden, which Julien couldn’t see. For him, the house remained dead, like one of those palaces in fairy tales, peopled with invisible inhabitants. Every morning and every evening, all he ever saw were the arms of the servant pushing open or closing the shutters. Then, the house would reassume its intensely melancholy feel of some abandoned tomb in the stillness of a cemetery. The foliage of the chestnut trees was so thick that their branches concealed the garden paths. And this hermetically sealed existence, haughty and silent, made the young man’s heart beat twice as fast. So this was wealth, was it? – this gloomy tranquillity, in which he recognised the same religious shudder that befalls anyone gazing up at the vaulting of churches.

How often, before going to bed, had he blown out his candle and stood for an hour at his window, trying to pierce the secrets of the Marsanne family house! At night, it stood out in a dark mass against the sky, and the chestnut trees spread out in a pool of inky darkness. The people inside must have drawn the curtains tightly closed, since not a gleam of light escaped between the slats of the shutters. The house didn’t even have that lived-in atmosphere of a place where you can sense people breathing in their sleep. It vanished into nothing in the darkness. It was at such times that Julien plucked up courage and picked up his flute. He could play with impunity; his rippling little notes echoed back from the empty house; some of his slower phrases melted into the garden shadows where not even the flapping of a bird’s wings could be heard. The old yellow-wood flute seemed to be playing its ancient tunes outside the castle of the Sleeping Beauty.

One Sunday, on the Place de l’Eglise, one of the postal workers abruptly pointed out to Julien a tall old man and an elderly lady, and told him their names. It was the Marquis and Marquise de Marsanne.