seeking means to get from his prison to the hotel de Poitiers.

About ten o'clock Cornelius and his sister, convinced that their new
inmate was sleeping, retired to their rooms. The young man studied
carefully the sounds they made in doing so, and thought he could
recognize the position of their apartments; they must, he believed,
occupy the whole second floor. Like all the houses of that period,
this floor was next below the roof, from which its windows projected,
adorned with spandrel tops that were richly sculptured. The roof
itself was edged with a sort of balustrade, concealing the gutters for
the rain water which gargoyles in the form of crocodile's heads
discharged into the street. The young seigneur, after studying this
topography as carefully as a cat, believed he could make his way from
the tower to the roof, and thence to Madame de Vallier's by the
gutters and the help of a gargoyle. But he did not count on the
narrowness of the loopholes of the tower; it was impossible to pass
through them. He then resolved to get out upon the roof of the house
through the window of the staircase on the second floor. To accomplish
this daring project he must leave his room, and Cornelius had carried
off the key.

By way of precaution, the young man had brought with him, concealed
under his clothes, one of those poignards formerly used to give the
"coup de grace" in a duel when the vanquished adversary begged the
victor to despatch him. This horrible weapon had on one side a blade
sharpened like a razor, and on the other a blade that was toothed like
a saw, but toothed in the reverse direction from that by which it
would enter the body. The young man determined to use this latter
blade to saw through the wood around the lock. Happily for him the
staple of the lock was put on to the outside of the door by four stout