On entering the room Ruperta looked under the bed, felt in all the drawers and closets, and did not leave a single corner uninspected. She knew that the devil occupies but little space when he draws in his tail and claws and horns, and that Asmodeus was corked up in a bottle for nobody knows how many years.
The room was entirely untenanted, and there was not the slightest trace of the ghostly monk.
Ruperta went to bed therefore somewhat more at ease, but she left her lamp burning none the less. She was no sooner in bed than she looked toward the window, and saw outside the window a gigantic figure, whose outlines were just discernible in the darkness, and which intercepted the light of the stars. The moon was invisible as it was in its last quarter.
Good Ruperta shivered with fear; she was on the point of crying out or knocking, when she remembered the colossal statue of Mars which reared its head before her window. She immediately looked again in that direction, and recognized perfectly all the outlines of the god of war. This reassured Ruperta for the moment, and she determined positively to go to sleep.
But sleep, the poor man's treasure so often coveted by the rich, is at no man's orders. At night God opens heaven's gates for him, and the capricious rascal visits whom he pleases, turning aside disdainfully from him who calls, and knocking at their doors who least expect him. Ruperta invoked him long before he paid heed to her.
At last, toward midnight, fatigue won the day. Little by little, the good woman's faculties became confused, her thoughts which were in general but ill connected, broke the imperceptible thread which held them, and scattered like the beads of a rosary. Her heart alone, distraught by fear, was still awake; at last it too fell fast asleep, and all was said; the lamp alone kept vigil.
But, like all things of earth, the lamp found rest two hours after Ruperta had closed her eyes in the sleep of the just. Upon the pretext that it had no oil to burn, it began to grow dim, sputtered, blazed up for an instant, and then died.
Just at that time Ruperta had a fearful dream; she dreamed that, as she was returning home from visiting Perrine, the ghostly monk pursued her; but happily, against all precedents of those who dream, Ruperta to her joy found that she had the legs of fifteen years, and fled so swiftly that the ghostly monk, although he seemed to glide and not to run over the ground, only arrived in time to have the door slammed in his face. Ruperta thought, still dreaming, that she heard him snarl and pound upon the door. But, as may be imagined, she was in no haste to let him in. She lit her lamp, ran up the stairs four at a time, jumped into bed, and put out the light.
But, just as she put out the light, she saw the monk's head outside her window; he had crawled up the wall like a lizard, and was trying to come through the glass. In her dream, she heard the grinding of his nails against it.
He sleep can be so sound as to hold out against a dream of that sort. Ruperta awoke with her hair standing on end, and dripping with icy perspiration. Her eyes were open, staring wildly around, and in spite of her they sought the window. With that she uttered a fearful shriek, for this is what she saw.