"Courage?" I echoed. "After the brazen way in which you stalked through the scattered belongings of the family at Aymaville, you would stop at nothing."
"In other words, I suppose you think me a typical Yankee boy? But I really was nervous, and inclined to apologise to somebody for being alive. That's why I can't go through another such ordeal without company; yet I wouldn't miss this eleventh-century castle for a bag of your English sovereigns."
"If only it had been left alone, and not restored!" I groaned. "In that case we should meet no one but bats."
"We? Then you will go with me?"
"I suppose so," I sighed. "It can't add more than a dozen grey hairs, and what are they among so many?"
A few kilometres further on we reached the "bizarre monticule," from which sprouted a still more bizarre château. From our low level, it was impossible to tell where the rock stopped, and where the castle began, so deftly had man seized every point of vantage offered by Nature—and "points" they literally were.
The ascent from the road to the château was much like climbing a fire-escape to the top of a New York sky-scraper, but we earned the right to cry "Excelsior!" at last, had we not by that moment been speechless. History now repeated itself. I rang; the castle gate was opened, but this time by a major-domo who had already in some marvellous way learned that strangers might be expected.
Never was so appallingly hospitable a man, and I trusted that even the Boy suffered from his kindness. Madame la Baronne, who was away for the afternoon, would chide him if guests were allowed to leave her house without refreshment. Eat we must, and drink we must, in the beautiful hall evidently used as a sitting-room by the absent châtelaine. Her wine and her cakes were served on an ancient silver tray, almost as old as the family traditions, and it was not until we had done to both such justice as the major-domo thought fair that he would consent to let us go further.
The house was really of superlative interest, though spoiled here and there by eccentric modern decoration. Much of the window glass had remained intact through centuries; the walls were twelve feet thick; the oak-beamed ceilings magnificent, and the secret stairways and rooms in the thickness of the walls, bewildering; but when our conductor began leading us into the bedrooms in daily use by the ladies of the castle, my gorge rose. "This is awful," I said. "I can't go on. What if Madame la Baronne returns and finds a strange man and a boy in her bedroom? Good heavens, now he's opening the door of the bath!"
"We must go on," whispered the Boy, convulsed with silent laughter. "If we don't, the major-domo won't understand our scruples. He'll think we're tired, and don't appreciate the castle. It would never do to hurt his feelings, when he has been so kind."