"The Troglodytes," continued Inness, "were the original, really original, proprietors of Mentone. They lived here, clad in bear-skins, and their voices are said to have been not sweet. See Pliny and Strabo. The bones of their dinners left here, and a few of their own (untimely deaths from fighting with each other for more), have now become the most precious treasures of the scientific world, equalling in richness the never-to-be-sufficiently-prized-and-investigated kitchen refuse of the Swiss lakes."
But the Professor, overhearing something of this frivolity at the sacred door, emerged from the hole in which he had been digging, and, covered with dust, but rich in the possession of a ball and socket joint of some primeval animal, came to the entrance, and forcibly, if not by force, addressed us:
"At a recent period it has been discovered that these five caverns in this limestone rock—"
"Alas, my porphyry!" murmured Janet.
"—contain bones of animals mixed with flint instruments imbedded in sand. The animals were the food and the flint instruments the weapons of a race of men who must have existed far back in prehistoric times. This was a rich discovery; but a richer was to come. In 1872 a human skeleton, all but perfect, a skeleton of a tall man, was discovered in the fourth cavern, surrounded by bones which prove its great antiquity—which prove, in fact, almost beyond a doubt, that it belonged to—the—Paleolithic epoch!" And the Professor paused, really overcome by the tremendous power of his own words.
But I am afraid we all gazed stupidly enough, first at him, then into the cave, then at him again, with only the vaguest idea of "Paleolithic's" importance. I must except Verney; he knew more. But he had gone inside, and was now digging in the hole in his turn to find flints for Janet.
Mrs. Trescott, who was our bone-master (she had studied anatomy, and highly admired "form"), asked if the skeleton had been "painted in oils."
Miss Elaine hoped that they buried it again "reverently," and "in consecrated ground."
The Professor gazed at them in turn; he literally could not find a word for reply.