Chapter II: Part 2

Adamas's reasoning was very sound. He concluded by calling down a thousand maledictions on Bellinde, who alone could have discovered and divulged Master Jovelin's real name, the death of D'Alvimar and the existence of the treasure.

It was decided that they should consult with Guillaume d'Ars as to the propriety of announcing D'Alvimar's death or continuing to keep it secret; and to that end the marquis called upon him the following day, in the afternoon.

Guillaume was absent and was not to return until evening.

The marquis sent a messenger to Briantes to bid them not be anxious if he returned late, and went to pay a visit to Monsieur Robin de Coulogne, who was then making a brief sojourn at his estate of Coudray, a pretty château on the heights of Verneuil, about a league from the château of Ars.

Robin, Vicomte de Coulogne, receiver-general of taxes in Berry and farmer-general of the salt tax, was one of the natural enemies of the ex-salt-smuggler Bois-Doré; and yet they had been the closest of friends since the affair of Florimond Dupuy, lord of Vatan.

Those who know the history of Berry will remember that in 1611, Florimond Dupuy, a fervent Huguenot and a great smuggler, had, to show his detestation of the salt tax, kidnapped one of Monsieur Robin's children. The marquis generously exerted himself to restore the child to its father, at the risk of a rupture with Florimond, who was, according to both friends and enemies, "a very uncomfortable bedfellow."

After this incident, the rebellion assumed such serious proportions, that it was found necessary to send twelve hundred infantry, a company of Swiss and twelve guns, to bring Monsieur Dupuy to terms in his château.

Twenty-nine of his people were hanged on the spot, to convenient trees, and his own head was cut off on Place de Grève. Young Robin was afterward Abbé of Sorrèze. The elder Robin was a grateful and devoted debtor of Monsieur de Bois-Doré, and we may well believe that the marquis owed it to that friendship that he was never molested for his former acts of complicity in the crime of salt-smuggling.

So Bois-Doré opened his heart to that faithful friend concerning a part of the embarrassment with which he was threatened by the prince's visit, and confessed that he was particularly disturbed concerning worthy Lucilio, whose presence in his house the hypocritical zealots of the province regarded with an evil eye.

"Your fears seem to me exaggerated," said the viscount. "Monsieur de Groot, whom scholars call Grotius, and who was sentenced to life imprisonment in his own country, succeeded in escaping, did he not, concealed in a chest, thanks to the courage and adroitness of his wife, and took refuge in Paris, where he is neither tormented nor even annoyed by anyone? Why should not your Italian enjoy the same privileges in France?"

"Because the government of France, which is not at all anxious to offend the Gomarists of Holland and Maurice of Nassau, will be most eager to please the pope by persecuting one of his victims. Twenty years Campanella has been in prison, and although he is esteemed and pitied in France, nothing is done to release him from the hands of his executioners; God knows whether they would give him shelter at this moment, openly!"

"Perhaps you are right," said Monsieur de Coulogne. "Very good; I approve your idea of effecting your friend's escape, at the slightest danger that may threaten your château; but I think that you should select a place of refuge to which he can go at once in case of alarm. Have you thought about it?"

"Yes, indeed," the marquis replied, "and I wish to consult you on that point. You own an old manor-house near by, which seems to be quite inhabitable, although I have never entered it. It is so near my house that a man pressed for time can reach there in an hour. It is also near a small farm-house of yours, and if you should give orders to the farmers to that effect, they would be ready, if anything should happen, to conceal and care for my poor fugitive. Will you do me this service?"

"Ask me for my life if you will, marquis; it is yours. So much the more are my servants, my property, my houses at your service. But let me reflect concerning the suitability of the place you have in mind: you refer to my old manor of Brilbault, do you not?"

"Precisely."

"Very well, let us see: it stands quite alone in its grounds, and the roads leading to it are detestable; so far so good. It is not upon the road to any town or village; another point in its favor. The place belongs to me, and the provost's people would never dare to cross the threshold. Moreover, the house is supposed to be haunted by the most uproarious and discontented spirits in the world, the result being that no marauding peasant is tempted to enter, no passer-by to stop there. This is better and better. Yes, I see that your choice, is a good one, and I will go thither with you to-night, to give the farmer the necessary orders."

Bois-Doré, having reflected in his turn, concluded that it would be better for him to go alone, in order not to arouse suspicion.

"Your farmers are no strangers to me," he said. "They were formerly associates of mine in--you know what!"

"Yes, yes, you villain," laughed the viscount; "they procured their salt cheap through you! Very well, take that road when you return; the streams are not full yet, and you can pass without danger. You can tell Jean Faraudet, the farmer, as if I had taken advantage of your passing to send him the message, to come to see me early to-morrow morning. You can cast a glance at the house and examine the surroundings, so that you will be able to direct your friend; indeed, it will be well for him to go there secretly to-morrow night, in order to become familiar with the roads and the entrances. In that way, if he should be obliged to take refuge there, he could do so without losing his way or making any mistake."

"Agreed," said the marquis, "and pray accept a thousand thanks for setting my mind at rest."

The viscount kept the marquis to supper; after which he entered his carriage just at nightfall, and took once more the road to Ars, which was little better than that leading to Brilbault. His reason for taking that direction was that he did not wish his chariot, which always created a sensation, to be seen in the neighborhood of the ruined manor.

With even more forethought than Monsieur Robin had advised, he alighted about a fourth of a league from the place which he proposed to inspect, ordered his servants to go quietly to Ars, and, taking one of the innumerable little paths in which Monsieur de Coulogne had probably never set his foot, but which were as familiar to the old smuggler as the paths in his rabbit warren, he disappeared in the damp underbrush, after pulling his boots up above his knees.

XLIV

It was a mild night and not very dark, despite the heavy black clouds which the wind drove across the sky, opening long furrows filled with stars, which suddenly closed to open anew in another place.

It is said that our noble or bourgeois ancestors were unquestionably more robust than we are to-day, while, on the contrary, our workmen and peasant ancestors were less so.

Such is the belief of the old men of my province, and it seems to me to be well-founded; well-to-do people were accustomed to an abundance of fresh air and exercise of which modern life deprives us, or which it makes unnecessary. The poorer classes were more poorly housed and not so well fed as in our day, to say nothing of the immense number of unfortunate wretches who were not housed or fed at all. The gentleman, with his régime of fighting and hunting, retained his health and strength to a very advanced age.

Bois-Doré, despite his sixty-nine years and the comparative effeminacy of his habits, still had strong sight, lungs impervious to the cold, and was sure-footed on the bare ground or on wet grass.

He slipped once or twice as he skirted the bushes, but he saved himself by clinging to the branches, like a man who knows how to take care of himself in a locality where the irregularities of the ground vary little over a large extent of territory.

Thanks to the short cut he had taken, he reached the farm of Brilbault in ten minutes.

Knowing the timid and superstitious character of the peasants, he coughed and spoke before knocking; then, as he knocked, he gave his name, and was received without alarm, at all events, if not without surprise.

Although the condition of the farming class was still very wretched, it was much less so, morally speaking, in Berry, which had long been a province of freeholds, than in those provinces where serfdom still existed. Moreover, in that region which is called the Black Valley, material resources have always assured the farmer, whether proprietor or tenant, a relative well-being which has saved him from great disasters and great epidemics.

At this period the leprosy hospitals were already empty; the pest, still so frequent in La Brenne and the neighborhood of Bourges, rarely scourged Fromental. The dwelling-houses, which were filthy and pestilential in the Marche and the Bourbonnais, were, at least in our neighborhood, stoutly built and healthy, as is proved by a large number of old country houses of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, which are still standing and easily recognizable by their vast tiled roofs, their windows framed with stone cut in the shape of prisms, and their attic windows surmounted by great sheaves of grain moulded in terra cotta.[5]

The marquis felt no repugnance, therefore, to entering the farmer's house, taking his seat by the fireplace, and chatting for a few moments there.

As everybody loved him, the _good monsieur_ could safely entrust to Jean Faraudet and his wife, if necessary, the care of a friend of his who was being prosecuted, he said, for an offence against the game laws; and when he informed them that their master, Monsieur Robin, wished to see them the next morning, to give them orders to that effect, they seemed overjoyed and eager to obey, answering him with the sacramental phrase expressive of zeal and willingness in that country:--"_Il y a bien moyen_!"

Madame Faraudet, however, who was called La Grand' Cateline, could not refrain from pitying the man who should be condemned to pass even a single night at the château of Brilbault.

She firmly believed that it was haunted, and her husband, after laughing at her as a sop to the marquis's scepticism, eventually admitted that he would rather die than put foot inside the building after sunset.

"My friend's presence," said the marquis, "will give you courage, I trust, for I promise you that it will drive away the evil spirits; but, since you are not afraid to enter the house by daylight, I beg you to put some wood on the hearth and prepare a bed in the best room that there is."

"We will carry everything there that is necessary, my dear monsieur," replied La Grand' Cateline; "but the poor Christian who goes there won't sleep a wink. He will hear a terrible uproar and hurly-burly all night, just as we do, may the good Lord preserve us! and as you will hear them yourself if you choose to wait till after twelve o'clock."

"I cannot wait," said the marquis, "and besides, the spirits wouldn't stir, knowing that I was there. I know what cowards they are, for I never have succeeded in hearing the voices that shout at the top of the donjon at Briantes, on Christmas night, nor the doors that open themselves at La Motte-Seuilly, nor the white lady who pulls aside the bed-curtains at the château of Ars."

"It's a curious thing, Monsieur Sylvain," said the farmer with a knowing air, "that there should be apparitions in our old château. We all know that there may be such things in other châteaux, because there aren't any of them where some great wrong hasn't been done or suffered; and that's the reason why the poor Christians who have been tortured or heartbroken in those houses return to them afterward to complain, as souls asking for prayers or justice. But in the château of Brilbault, which was never occupied, there never has been any good or evil done so far as I know."

"We must believe," said the woman, who plied her distaff busily as she talked, "that the former lord died in a distant land, by violence and in sin; for you know the legend of Brilbault, don't you? It isn't long. A noble had built this château as far as the roof, when he started for the Holy Land with his seven sons. The château was sold again and again, but no one ever fancied it. People thought that it brought families ill-luck; that is why it has never been used except to store crops. They put on a roof which is good for nothing now; but there are still two fine rooms and such a hall! So big that two people can hardly recognize each other from one end to the other."

"Can you let me have the keys?" said the marquis; "I would like to see the interior."

"Here are the keys; but my dear Monsieur Sylvain of the good Lord, don't go there! It is just the time for the deviltry to begin."

"What deviltry, my good friends?" said the marquis laughingly; "what sort of creatures are these wicked devils?"

"I have never seen them, monsieur, nor wanted to see them," said the farmer; "but I hear them well enough, I hear them too well! Some groan and others sing. There's laughter, then yelling and swearing and weeping till daybreak, when they all fly away through the air; for it is securely locked, and no human being can enter without leave or help from me."

"May it not be that your farm-hands go there to amuse themselves, or some thief to prevent you detecting his thievery?"

"No, monsieur, no! Our workmen and servants are so frightened that with all your money you couldn't hire them to go within two gunshots of the château after sunset; indeed, you see they no longer sleep in our house, because they say it's too near that infernal building. They all sleep in the barn yonder at the end of the yard."

"So much the better for the little secret we have together to-night," said the marquis; "but so much the better too, perhaps, for those who play the part of ghosts for the sole purpose of robbing you!"

"What could they steal, pray, Monsieur Sylvain? There's nothing in the château. When I saw that the devil used torches there, I was afraid of a fire, and I took out my whole crop, except a few little fagots and a dozen bundles of hay and straw, which I left in order not to make them too angry, for they say that imps like to play about in the hay and the branches; and, to tell the truth, I found it all tossed about and trampled; it was as if fifty living men had walked over it."

The marquis knew Faraudet to be very truthful and incapable of inventing anything whatsoever to avoid doing him a service.

He began to think therefore that, if lights were seen in the old manor, if voices were heard there, and above all, if feet or bodies trampled and disturbed the straw, there was more reality than deviltry in that state of affairs, and that the château, which the farmer and his wife confessed that they had not dared to enter for more than six weeks, might very well be used already as a refuge by fugitives.

"Whether they be maleficent or congenial, I propose to see them," he said to himself.

And, putting his naked sword under his arm, carrying the keys of the château in one hand and a lantern in the other, he started across the fields toward the silent, ruined structure.

Faraudet, when his wife began to lament the _good monsieur's_ rashness, was ashamed to let him go alone and decided to accompany him.

But when the marquis had crossed the bridge, he found that the poor peasant was trembling so violently, that he feared that he should be more embarrassed than assisted by a man in such a plight and begged him to go no farther.

Most of the châteaux in the Black Valley, even those of the primitive Middle Ages, are situated in the depths of the valleys instead of on the high land, as in La Marche and the Bourbonnais. There is a very plausible explanation of this anomaly. In a region devoid of any considerable elevations, the water-courses afford the best means of defence.

At Brilbault therefore, as at Briantes, La Motte-Seuilly, Saint-Chartier, La Motte-de-Presles, etc., the manor-house was built on a winding stream of sufficient size to fill with running water the double circular moat.

The bridge over the outer moat was very narrow and supported upon arches of no definite type, midway between the full arch and the ogive.

The whole château was of a transitional style of architecture; the façade was of a curious shape; the door and the staircase window above it were set in the wall to a depth of several mètres, as if for protection from attacks from without.

The top of the building should have been _mascherolé_ at that point; but it was originally left unfinished and was finally surmounted by a roof entirely out of keeping with the rest of the structure, which indicated a scheme of some grandeur never carried to completion.

The marquis went straight to the château as the crow flies; the encircling walls had crumbled to such an extent and sustained so many breaches, the moats were so completely filled in innumerable places, that it was not necessary to go to the gates.

He noiselessly opened the main door, which was small and low, under a rampant arch surmounted by an ogive of carved flower-work.

There he partly opened his lantern to look at the floor at his feet, for the farmer had warned him to be careful of the staircase.

[Footnote 5: These sheaves, which are rare and much prized by archæologists, have retained a sort of traditional vogue in certain localities; the potteries of Verneuil make very pretty ones after old models. The small urn, with four or six handles on several different levels, and surmounted by birds or flowers, is reproduced in their system of decoration.]

XLV

It was a spiral staircase of great beauty, broad enough for six persons and as light as the sticks of a fan. It was built of a friable white stone; many steps had been entirely destroyed by the fall of some portion of the building; but those which remained seemed freshly hewn and bore no trace of wear. At each half turn of the spiral was a step, supported by a grinning face, a fantastic beast, or the bust of an armed man carved in relief on the wall.

The marquis was interested in these figures, which seemed to move in the flickering light of his lantern.

He ascended the stairs slowly, listening whenever he stopped; and as he heard no other sound than that of the wind in the crumbling roof, and as the doors of the rooms that he passed were secured by padlocks, he became more and more doubtful of the existence of any inhabitants whatsoever. Thus he reached the upper floor, where were the two apartments originally intended for the châtelain.

As it was the custom, in the Middle Ages, for the lord of the manor to have his own quarters under the eaves, and, if necessary, to destroy the staircase and sustain a siege in his own apartments, gaps were often left in building stairways, so that the châtelain could reach his nest only by means of a ladder which he drew up after him at night. In other instances the steps of the last flight were purposely made so thin that a few blows with a bar sufficed to shatter them.

The latter was the case at the château of Brilbault; and the gaps for which the marquis had to be on the lookout were caused by accident, as we have said. With his long legs he was able to straddle them without serious danger.

These two rooms being those which the farmer had mentioned as suitable for Lucilio's occupancy in case of need, Bois-Doré's first impulse was to go in and see if they were provided with window-frames, or at least with shutters at the windows; for all of the narrow, deep-set windows in the stairway, with stone benches placed diagonally across the embrasures, admitted violent gusts of wind, from which he had difficulty in protecting his light.

But, as he was on the point of opening those seignioral apartments, of which he had the keys, the marquis hesitated.

If the manor-house was in reality resorted to as a place of refuge by any person, that person was probably in those rooms, and, being surprised in his sleep, would seek to defend himself without awaiting an explanation. His proposed exploration therefore should be conducted with due prudence. The marquis did not believe in ghosts, and was the less disposed to fear living things because he was not seeking them with any evil purpose. If some poor devil were in hiding there, he was resolved, whoever he might be, to leave him there in peace and not betray the secret he had surprised.

But the refugee's first fright might assume the form of hostility. The marquis could have made no appreciable noise in entering and ascending the stairs, as nothing stirred. It was most advisable for him to make sure of the truth unseen and unheard, if possible, or at all events without making his appearance too abruptly.

With that end in view, he entered a room with no door, where the most absolute darkness reigned, all the windows being covered with boards or stuffed with straw. The floor was covered with a layer of dust and pulverized cement, of such depth that one's footsteps were deadened by it as by ashes.

Bois-Doré walked for a long while, hardly able to see where he was going. He had closed his lantern, which was unprovided with glass or horn, but had a half cylinder of iron with three holes in it, according to the custom of the province. He did not venture to open it until he had reached the end of that vast apartment and had satisfied himself that he was in an absolutely silent and deserted spot.

Then he placed his light on the floor in front of him and stepped back to an enormous fire-place which was near at hand.

Standing there, he was able to accustom his eyes little by little to so faint a light in so vast a space, and to make out that he was in a hall which extended the whole length of the château.

He examined the fire-place by which he was standing. Like everything else it was of white stone, and the square bases, projecting from the massive columns, seemed as fresh and new as if they had been hewn the day before; the double fillets of the mantel were neither marred nor chipped, and the same was true of the escutcheon, without coat-of-arms, which crowned the mantel. Even the smoke-flue, and the fire-place itself, which was not sheathed with iron, bore no traces of fire, smoke or ashes. The unfinished building had never been used, that was evident. No one had ever occupied, no one now occupied that bare, cheerless hall.

Having satisfied himself of that fact, the marquis made bold to go to ascertain why a barrier of boards, waist-high, extended diagonally across that immense room at a point halfway between the two ends. Upon reaching that point, he found himself looking into space. The floor had fallen or been cut away, as had that of the lower stories, in quite half of the building, perhaps to facilitate the storing of the crops.

The eye plunged into the darkness of an expanse that seemed as large as the interior of a cathedral.

Bois-Doré had been there for some moments, trying to form a just idea of his surroundings, when, from the depths which his eyes questioned in vain, a sort of groan rose to his ears.

He started, closed his lantern, and concealed it behind the boards, held his breath and listened intently, for his hearing was a little dull and might deceive him as to the nature of the sounds.

Was it a door or a shutter closed by the wind?

He had not waited three minutes when the same groan was repeated, even more distinct, and at the same time it seemed to him that a faint ray of light, very far below him, illumined those depths, which, viewed from his position, were literally an abyss.

He knelt to avoid being seen, and looked between the boards which served him as a balustrade.

The light rapidly increased and soon became bright enough to enable him to see, or rather to divine, in a vague blending of light and shadow, the outline of a room on the ground floor, as large as that in which he was, but evidently much higher before the crumbling of the intermediate floors, as he could judge by the spring of the arched ceiling which rested upon bases embellished with fanciful human and animal figures, much larger and protruding farther than those he had previously seen on the stairway.

The only furniture consisted of several piles of dry forage, and boards arranged as a barrier near one end, with the broken remains of a number of mangers. The room had been used for a long time as a stable for cattle. Among the boards could be seen pieces of yokes and ploughshares. Then all these things were shrouded in shadow once more, and the light, ascending, struck the great stretch of wall which formed the gable end of the building, and which was directly opposite the marquis, some forty feet in height.

This light, now pale, now reddish, came from an invisible flame placed under the ceiling of the ground-floor apartment--that is to say, under that part of it which had not fallen, corresponding to that from which the marquis watched this gloomy, flickering tableau.

Suddenly there was a noise of doors closing, footsteps and voices under that ceiling, and a confused mass of moving shadows, sometimes of enormous size, sometimes stunted as it were, was thrown in the most curious fashion on the high wall, as if a great number of persons were passing back and forth in front of a great fire.

"This is a very strange game of hide-and-seek," thought the marquis, "and it is impossible to deny that this château is filled with wandering, chattering ghosts. Let us hear what they say."

He listened, but he could not succeed in distinguishing a single phrase, a word, a syllable, amid a loud murmur of words, songs, groans and laughter.

The appalling resonance of the arched ceiling, which hurled the sounds like shadows against the opposite wall, blended all the voices in a single one--all the words in a confused murmur.

The marquis was not deaf, but he had the sensitive hearing peculiar to old men, who can hear very distinctly sounds that are moderately loud and words clearly articulated, but whom an uproar, a hurly-burly of voices disturbs and confuses to no purpose.

Thus he distinguished intonations, nothing more: sometimes that of a hoarse, loud voice, which seemed to be telling a story; sometimes the refrain of a ballad abruptly interrupted by threatening accents; and then a loud voice which seemed to ridicule and imitate the others, and which raised a tempest of uproarious and brutal laughter.

Sometimes there were long monologues, then dialogues between two or three, and suddenly shouts of anger or merriment which resembled roars. Indeed, it might be that those people were speaking a language which the marquis did not know.

He persuaded himself that they were simply a band of vagrants or mountebanks out of employment, living by marauding, and waiting under cover of that ruin for the spring to come, or perhaps in hiding there because of some crime.

That laughter, those strange costumes outlined on the wall like Chinese ghosts, those long harangues, those animated dialogues were connected perhaps with the study of some burlesque art.

"If I were nearer to them," he thought, "I might be amused; no man is ever ill received in any company, however bad it may be, if he enters it offering his purse with a good grace."

So he took up his lantern and was preparing to descend, when the conversations, songs and laughter changed into cries of animals, so lifelike, so perfectly imitated, that one would have said that it was a whole barnyard in commotion. There were the ox, the ass, the horse, the goat, the rooster, the duck and the lamb, all braying and crowing together. Then they all ceased, as if to listen to the barking of a pack of hounds, the blast of the horn--all the typical noises of a hunt.

Was it a game? Did it occur to the actors to look at themselves on the wall? They did not seem to be imitating the actions of the beasts whose cries they mimicked.

In the midst of the uproar a child cried out in a shrill voice, perhaps to do as the others did, perhaps because he was frightened in his sleep; and Bois-Doré saw the shadow of a tiny person pass, with gestures like those of a monkey. Next there came a huge head crowned by a sort of plumed helmet, with an absurd nose outlined against the bright wall; then a long-haired head which seemed to wear a priest's cap, and which conversed with a long shadow that stood for many minutes as motionless as a statue.

Then all the noises suddenly ceased, and naught could be heard save a low groaning, which resembled the groaning caused by physical pain, and which Bois-Doré had constantly detected, recurring at intervals, like a doleful chord on an organ, in the pauses of that wild charivari.

The tumult stilled, the shadow of a gigantic crucifix was thrown upon the wall.

The light seemed to change its position, and the cross became very small; at last it disappeared, and its place was taken by a single figure very sharply outlined, while a sepulchral voice recited in a monotonous tone a prayer which seemed to be the prayer for those who are in the death agony.

XLVI

Bois-Doré, who had held his place, detained by the amusement he derived from that phantasmagoric spectacle and those strange noises, was beginning to feel so cold that his teeth fairly chattered when this tedious ceremony began.

This time, although he had determined to go to see what was taking place, he was withheld by the appalling resemblance presented by the last apparition. It became more precise and more unmistakable as the sepulchral voice proceeded with its sepulchral prayer, and the marquis, as if fascinated, could not remove his eyes from it.

That head, so easily recognizable by the short hair, cut _à la malcontent_, by the Spanish ruff in which it was framed as it were, by its sharp and angular, yet refined outlines, and lastly by the peculiar shape of the beard and moustache, was the head of D'Alvimar, thrown back in the rigor of death.

At first Bois-Doré fought against the idea; then it took entire possession of him, became a certainty, a source of intense agitation and insurmountable terror.

He had never believed that he was in any danger from ghosts. He said and he thought that, having never put any man to death from revenge or from cruelty, he was quite sure that he should never be visited by any soul in anger or distress; but he was no more disposed than the majority of sensible men of his time to deny the return of spirits to earth, or the reality of the apparitions which so many persons entirely worthy of confidence described in detail.

"This D'Alvimar is surely dead," he thought; "I touched his cold limbs; I saw his body, already stiff in death, taken from his horse's back. He has been reposing underground for several weeks, and yet I see him here before me, I who have always refused to see anything supernatural where others saw terrible phantoms! Was this man, contrary to all appearances, innocent of the crime of which I accused him and for which I punished him? Is this a rebuke of my conscience? Is it a vision of my brain? Is it the chilling atmosphere of this ruin stealing over me and confusing my faculties? Whatever it may be," he thought, "I have had enough of it."

And, feeling the dizziness which is the precursor of a swoon, he dragged himself out to the stairway. There he recovered himself somewhat, and descended the ruinous spiral staircase with a firm step. But, when he reached the foot, instead of mustering courage to force his way into the apartments on the ground floor, he had no desire to see or hear anything further; and impelled by an unconquerable feeling of repugnance, he rushed forth into the fields, confessing his fear to himself, and ready to avow it artlessly to the first person who should question him concerning it.

He found the farmer, more dead than alive, waiting for him on the bridge.

It was an heroic act on the good man's part to remain there. He was incapable of saying or listening to anything whatsoever, and not until he and the marquis had returned to the farmhouse, did he venture to ask any questions.

"Well, my poor dear Monsieur Sylvain," he said, "I trust you have had your fill of watching their lights, and listening to their bellowing! I thought surely I should never see you come back!"

"It is certain that something out of the common course is taking place in that ruin," said the marquis, tossing off a glass of wine which the farmer's wife handed him, and which was by no means unacceptable.

"I fell in with no evil spirits there---"

"Ah! but you're whiter than your ruffles, my dear monsieur!" said La Grand' Cateline. "Warm yourself, pray, my lord, so that you won't be sick."

"To tell the truth, I was very cold," replied the marquis, "and I fancied that I saw things which perhaps I didn't see at all; but the walk will quicken my blood, and I fear to alarm my family by remaining longer. Good night to you, good people! Drink to my health."

He paid them handsomely for their eagerness to oblige, and returned to his carriage, which was waiting for him at the place where he had left it. Aristandre had begun to be anxious; but, when the marquis assured him that nothing unpleasant had happened to him, the honest coachman was convinced that Adamas was not boasting when he declared that monsieur still indulged in gallant adventures.

"There must be some pretty shepherdess at that farm!" he said to Clindor as they drove homeward.

He was confirmed in this sagacious idea when his master forbade him to speak of his trip through the fields.

Instead of stopping at Ars, the marquis bade him drive on to Briantes. He was surprised at and already a little ashamed of the momentary panic that had caused him to leave Brilbault without fathoming the mystery.

"If I say anything about it, they will laugh at me," he thought; "they will say under their breaths that I am becoming a dotard in my old age. It will be much better not to mention it to anyone; and, as it makes little difference, after all, whether Brilbault is in the hands of a band of gypsies or of sorcerers, I will look about for some other quieter place of refuge for Lucilio."

As he approached the château, his mind, becoming constantly calmer, questioned itself concerning its sensations.

What impressed him most deeply was the fact that he had been surprised by terror at a moment when nothing had happened which tended to terrify him; when, on the contrary, he had felt strongly inclined to laugh at the whimsical antics of those imps and the amusing oddity of their shadows on the wall.

As a result of his reflections on this subject, he ordered Aristandre to stop at the Chambon meadow and walked the short distance from the road to the cottage of Marie the gardener, called La Caille-Bottée.

That cottage still exists; it is occupied by market-gardeners. It is a tumble-down structure, flanked by a stair-turret built of stones without mortar. The pretty orchard, surrounded by dense hedges and wild bramble-bushes, was, so it is said, a gift from Monsieur de Bois-Doré to La Caille-Bottée.

He found the lay brother there, sharing the convent repast with his mistress, who shared with him the wine and the fruit from her garden.

Their partnership was not avowed, however; they observed some precaution, in order not to be "ordered to marry," and thereby to lose the veteran's privilege enjoyed by Jean le Clope at the Carmelite convent.

"_Have no fear, my friends," said the marquis, interrupting their tête-à-tête. "We have a secret together, and I simply wish to say a word to you._"

"_Present, captain!" replied Jean le Clope, coming out from under the table where he had taken refuge._]

"Have no fear, my friends," said the marquis, interrupting their tête-à-tête. "We have a secret together, and I simply wish to say a word to you."

"Present, captain!" replied Jean le Clope, coming out from under the table where he had taken refuge; "I beg you to forgive me, but I didn't know who was coming to the house, and people make so much talk about me!"

"Very unjustly, I doubt not," said the marquis with a smile. "But look you, my friend; I have not seen you since a certain occurrence. I sent you a slight acknowledgment by Adamas, to whom you swore that you had faithfully carried out my orders. Having an opportunity to-night to speak to you a moment alone, I wish to learn from you some of the details as to the manner in which you did the business."

"What's that, captain? there's no two ways of burying a dead man, and I did a Christian's duty as Christianly as the prior of _my_ community could have done it."

"I do not doubt it, comrade; but were you prudent?"

"Does my captain doubt me?" cried the veteran, with a sensitiveness which was particularly noticeable in him after supper.

"I do not doubt your discretion, Jean, but I have a little doubt of your skill in concealing this interment; for Monsieur d'Alvimar's death is known to my enemies to-day, and yet I can no more doubt the trustworthiness of my servants than I can doubt yours."

"Alas! monsieur le marquis, your servants were not the only ones in the secret," observed La Caille-Bottée sagaciously; "Monsieur d'Ars's servants may have told; and besides, weren't you looking that night for a man who had escaped and whom you wanted to catch?"

"That is true; he is the only one whom I suspect. I have not come here to reproach you, my friends, but to ask you where, when and how you buried that body."

"Where?" said Jean le Clope, glancing at La Caille-Bottée. "In our garden, and if you want to see the place----"

"I do not care about it. But was it quite dark, or had the day begun to break?"

"It was about--two or three o'clock in the morning," said the lay brother with some hesitation, glancing again at the pock-marked old maid, who seemed to suggest his answers with her eyes.

"And nobody saw you?" said Bois-Doré, watching them both closely.

That question threw the lay brother into confusion, and the marquis detected more significant glances between him and his companion. It was becoming evident to him that they were afraid they had been seen, and that, in their fear of being contradicted by a reliable witness, they dared not go into details concerning the manner in which they had carried out the marquis's wishes.

He rose and repeated the question in an imperative tone.

"Alas! my good lord," said La Caille-Bottée, falling on her knees, "forgive this poor cripple in body and mind, who has probably drunk a little too much to-night, and can't say just what he wants to say!"

"Yes, forgive me, captain," added the veteran, deeply affected apparently by the plight of his own brain, and kneeling in his turn.

"You have deceived me, my friends!" said the marquis, determined to force the truth from them; "you did not bury Monsieur d'Alvimar yourselves! You were afraid, or had scruples, or did not like to do it; you notified Monsieur Poulain."

"No, monsieur, no!" cried La Caille-Bottée earnestly; "we would never have done such a thing, knowing that Monsieur Poulain is against you! Since you know that we didn't obey you, you must know also that it wasn't our fault, and that the devil in person had a hand in it."

"Tell me what happened," rejoined the marquis; "I propose to find out whether you will tell me the truth."

The gardener, convinced that the marquis knew more than she knew herself, told her story succinctly as follows:

"When you had gone, dear monsieur, the first thing we did was to carry the dead body into our garden, where we covered it over with a great mat; for I wasn't at all anxious to bring it into the house, and didn't see the use of it. I confess that I was terribly afraid of it, and I wouldn't have consented to receive such company for anybody but you, my good monsieur.

"Jean called me a fool and laughed at me, while he was drinking the rest of his wine, to protect himself from the cold night air, so he said, but perhaps it was to turn his mind away from the dismal thoughts that always come to a body at the sight of a corpse, no matter how hard your heart may be.

"I must also confess that the first thing poor Jean here thought of was to take what there was in the dead man's pockets and in the saddle-bags on the horse that brought him here. You hadn't said anything about it, so we thought it belonged to us, and we were sitting here counting the money on the table, so that we could hand over every sou to you, if you should claim it.

"There was a good-sized purse full of gold, and Jean, who was still drinking, enjoyed staring at it and handling it. What can you expect, monsieur? poor people like us are surprised when we have any of it to handle. And we were making plans about how we would spend that fortune. Jean wanted to buy a vineyard, but I said it would be much better to have an orchard well stocked with bearing nut trees; and here we sat, half laughing with joy to find ourselves so rich, half disputing over the use we should make of our money, when the cuckoo-clock struck four in the morning.

"'Now,' says I to poor Jean, 'I am not afraid any more, and as you aren't very spry with your wooden leg, although you can use the spade a little with your good foot, I'll help you to dig the grave. I never wished ill to any living man; but as long as this gentleman is dead, I don't want him to come to life again. There are people in the world who, by going out of it, benefit those who are left.'

"I shall have to admit my guilt, my dear monsieur, for that's the only prayer that that wicked Jean and I said for the dead man.

"Well, we took the spade, and both of us went back into the garden and took up the mat where we had hidden the body. Who was surprised, monsieur? There was nothing under it; somebody had stolen our corpse! We looked everywhere, turned everything over: nothing, monsieur, nothing! We thought we had gone mad and had dreamed everything that had happened that night, and I ran back into the house to see if the money wasn't a vision.

"Well, monsieur, if you were not here questioning us, we might believe that the devil had been acting a farce for us; for the drawer in which I had put the money and jewels was open, and it had all flown away from the house while we were in the garden, just as the dead man had flown away from the garden while we were in the house."

As she finished her story, La Caille-Bottée bewailed the loss of the money, and the lay brother, who only awaited an opportunity to weep, shed tears too manifestly sincere for the marquis to entertain any doubt as to the strange and twofold theft committed on their premises, of a full purse and a deceased dead man, as the gardener said in a doleful tone.

XLVII

During this duet of lamentations, the marquis reflected.

"Tell me, my friends," he said, "did you see no footprints in your garden, no indication that your house had been entered by violent means?"

"We paid no attention to that matter for some time," replied La Caille-Bottée, "we were too much upset; but when it was daylight, we examined everything as well as we could. There was nothing unusual in the house. They must have come in as soon as our backs were turned; we left the door and the drawer open, and the money in plain sight; we were much to blame for that, alas!"

"In that case," observed the marquis, "the deceased did not go away unaided, and had not only friends to take away his remains, but others to recover his money and jewels."

"I imagine, monsieur, that there were only two of them for the first task, and one for the last, and that one not connected with the others; for we discovered the prints of two pair of feet on our flower-beds, going toward the fence on the Briantes side, and those feet seemed to have had on boots or pattens; while on the gravel in our little yard, there were the marks of bare feet, little child's feet, going toward the town. But, as there was already water in the paths, we couldn't discover anything outside of our own place."

Bois-Doré reasoned thus mentally:

"Sancho, having made his escape, must have followed and watched us. Then he probably went to Monsieur Poulain, who sent someone or came himself with Sancho, to obtain D'Alvimar's body and bury it. That accounts for the denunciation. For reasons of which I know nothing, the rector dared not exhibit the body to his parishioners and denounce me publicly. Perhaps he wished to give Sancho time to make his escape. As for the money, some little reprobate must have noticed the going in and out, listened at the door, and seized the opportunity: that is of very little consequence to me."

Then, having reflected further upon the whole matter and asked various questions which resulted in throwing no new light, he said:

"My friends, when we brought that dead man here across his horse, we left the saddle-bags with you, with no other purpose than to rid ourselves of them and wash our hands of everything that had belonged to our enemy. The next day, however, on reflecting that those saddle-bags might contain papers of interest to us, we sent to you to obtain them, and you told Adamas that they contained nothing except a change of clothing and a little linen--no papers or documents of any kind."

"That is the truth, monsieur," replied the gardener, "and we can show them to you now, just as they were given to us. The thief didn't see them lying on the bed, where we tossed them, or else he didn't choose to burden himself with them."

The marquis caused them to be brought, and verified the truth of her statement.

However, on examining them and turning them over, he discovered a sort of secret pocket, which had escaped the notice of his hosts, and of which the stitching had to be ripped in order to open it. He found there some papers which he carried away, after compensating the gardener and the veteran for the loss they had sustained, and enjoining silence upon them until further orders.

It was after eleven o'clock when the marquis returned home.

Mario was not asleep; he was playing jackstraws with Lauriane in the salon, being unwilling to go to bed until his father returned safely.

Lucilio was reading by the fire, not allowing his attention to be distracted by the laughter of the children, but pleasantly soothed in his deep meditations by that fresh, charming music, to which his loving heart and his musical ear were peculiarly sensitive.

Since he had played the soothsayer in monsieur le prince's presence, the children called him the astrologer, and teased him to make him smile. The good-natured savant smiled as much as they wished without ceasing his mental labor, for his kindly disposition and gentle instincts remained united to his body, so to speak, and spoke through his beautiful Italian eyes, even when his mind was voyaging in celestial spheres.

Adamas, who, despite his adoration for his little count, was bored to the point of melancholy by the absence of his divine marquis, was wandering about the halls and the courtyard like a soul in distress, when he heard at last the echoing trot of Pimante and Squilindre and the grinding of the stones in the road, which were crushed under the wheels of the monumental chariot like grapes in the wine-press.

"Here comes monsieur!" he cried, throwing open the door of the salon as noisily and joyously as if the marquis had been absent a year; and he ran to the kitchen to bring with his own hands a bowl of steaming punch, concocted of wine and aromatic herbs--a cunningly compounded and pleasant beverage of which he jealously guarded the secret, and to which he attributed his old master's excellent health and lusty appearance.

Honest Sylvain embraced his son and greeted his daughter affectionately, pressed his _astrologer's_ hand, drank the cordial which his faithful retainer offered him, and, having thus gratified his whole family, thrust his long legs almost into the fire, placed a small round table by his side, and requested Lucilio to read certain papers which he had brought, while Mario translated them aloud as best he could.

The papers were written in Spanish, in the shape of notes collected for a memorial, and were held together by a strap. They bore no address, nor seal, nor signature. The notes were a series of alleged facts, official or officious, concerning the state of feeling in France; concerning the disposition, presumed or discovered by stealth, of divers individuals of more or less consequence from a Spanish standpoint; and concerning public opinion with respect to the policy of Spain; in a word, a species of diplomatic production, very well done, although unfinished, and partly in the shape of a rough draft.

It was very clear that D'Alvimar, whose voluntary seclusion and constant writing during the few days of his sojourn at Briantes they had not been able to understand, had been constantly reporting to some prince, minister or patron, the results of a secret mission; that he was exceedingly hostile to France, and overflowing with aversion and disdain for the Frenchmen of all classes with whom he had come in contact.

His minute criticism was not devoid of wit, nor, consequently, of interest. D'Alvimar had a keen intellect, and was a specious reasoner. In default of connections as exalted and as intimate as he might have desired in the interests of his fortune and of the importance of his rôle, he was very skilful in making the most of trivial incidents, and in interpreting a word he had surprised or caught on the wing: a chance remark, a rumor, a reflection let fall by anybody, wherever he happened to be--everything was turned to some use by him; and one could see in that treacherous yet trivial labor the irresistible impulse and the secret gratification of a heart overflowing with bitterness, envy and distress.

Lucilio, who divined at the first word the marquis's deep interest in this discovery, turned over the last leaves, and soon found this one, which Mario translated fluently, almost without hesitation, turning his beautiful eyes to the beautiful eyes of his teacher at the end of each sentence, to make sure before continuing that he had made no mistake: