Easily, lightly, rapidly, over the jumbled rocks and through the
tangled underbrush, the hoary old man made his way, beating his cane
to right and left to open a path before us. I kept carefully to his
foot-prints, really exerting myself, however, to maintain his rate of
progress.
Fully a quarter of an hour it must have been that we walked thus in
file one behind the other. Then my guide stopped of a sudden, turned
toward me, and said:
“Monsieur, you will be careful!”
His cane pointed to some obstacle, or to some danger, just to my right.
Cautiously I stepped nearer, and a creeping chill ran over me: we were
on the brink of a precipice, its edges so thoroughly masked with fern
that a step six inches off the path would have hurled me into a void. I
could not have guessed the nearness of such peril. Feeling the ground
in front of me with my toe, I leaned over and peered down into the
abyss. Along its bottom a mountain torrent ran, black water rushing
over polished white stones. The sheer face of the gorge offered not a
projection to foot or hand.
“Keep well to the left, Monsieur,” said the old man; and he strode on.
The ground now took on a strange contour previously unknown to me. The
ditched, pockmarked, crevassed soil of the Mort de Gauthier where my
horse was lying, and the maze of gorges through which I had pursued
Madeleine, came to an end. We were now on a gently sloping table-land
broken in all directions by curious blocks of stone. The soil was
overgrown with brambles, juniper, and numerous other spiny shrubs.
The rocks sprang naked from the earth in abrupt faces cut apparently
to geometrical design, triangles, squares, polygons, as though
fashioned with human tools. On the one hand, none of their surfaces was
sufficiently smooth to warrant the assumption of deliberate working;
on the other there was too little irregularity in their structure and
disposition to allay wonder at such a strange caprice of Nature. As
a whole, indeed, they formed a veritable labyrinth, through which it
would have been difficult to pick one’s way even in broad daylight. The
old man went indifferently onward, nevertheless, not hesitating in the
least, and finding his path without effort through this entanglement of
scattered boulders.
Again the topography changed. The monoliths became fewer in number; the
plateau had a perceptible down grade. The junipers, myrtles and mastics
grew stunted and less crowded, and the land was otherwise quite barren.
If I describe this walk of ours in such detail, I do so in the hope
that some of you may be tempted to seek out in the neighborhood of my
misfortune, the house of which I am to speak. Its exact location I
cannot recall. I could not find it again for the life of me; nor could
I really identify it among other houses you might show me. It is,
nevertheless, the House of the Secret, though all I can say of it is
that, at last, we came to it.
In the opaque wall of darkness ahead of us a tall black mass stood out
against the paler black of the night around it. First came a hedge of
tall cypress trees, the boundary of a private park, a hedge like the
thousands of other hedges one may find about the country villas of
Provence--the Provence that frizzles in summer sunshine.
In the hedge was an iron gate, between the bars of which the old man
slipped a hand and turned some secret lock. The gate swung open. My
feet began to tread on a soft, thick sod, unmown. Brushing my head
I could feel low-hanging branches of cedars, pines and cork-trees.
Finally through the inky black of the grove the brick-stone front of a
house came into view. It was so dark under the matted interlacing of
branches along the walk, that I could not isolate a single distinctive
feature on the façade before me, except perhaps the stone stairway up
which I went to a door. There were just eight steps. I remember because
I counted them. One other detail: from the roof, and on my left as I
went in, an indistinct but tall, slender mass seemed to rise, a sort of
tower, or belfry.... Mark this item carefully.... It may help you!
The door was of heavy oak, studded with iron nails. The knocker was a
hammer and an anvil, the latter with two points and set deep into the
thick panelling.
As he raised the hammer, my companion turned to me, his eyes gleaming
with an eagerness I did not like. But his voice, soft, calm, caressing,
benevolent, once more relieved my fear, once more constrained me to
resist an impulse to stand on my guard like an animal at bay!
“Monsieur,” he said, “I am sure you will forgive me for a slight
advertence: my father, who is about to open the door, is a very old
man, and his sleep must be respected; you will be good enough to make
as little noise inside as possible!”
The metallic beat of the hammer upon the anvil strangely mingled in my
ears with the words I had just heard. It was something like an echo of
the stupor, which, at these strange phrases, struck me like a blow. So
this old fellow had a father, whom he referred to as an old man! If he
was eighty, more or less, how old would this parent be?
Again the hammer fell upon the anvil in a double rapid stroke like the
ritualistic stamp of the fencer’s foot as the duel begins. And this
double stroke was followed by another, a single one, like the first.
The door swung open.