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!