Madame de Lanrivain cleared her throat and produced a reassuring smile. �Didn�t Herv� tell you the story of Kerfol? An ancestor of his was mixed up in it. You know every Breton house has its ghost-story; and some of them are rather unpleasant.�
�Yes—but those dogs?� I insisted.
�Well, those dogs are the ghosts of Kerfol. At least, the peasants say there�s one day in the year when a lot of dogs appear there; and that day the keeper and his daughter go off to Morlaix and get drunk. The women in Brittany drink dreadfully.� She stooped to match a silk; then she lifted her charming inquisitive Parisian face: �Did you really see a lot of dogs? There isn�t one at Kerfol,� she said.
II
Lanrivain, the next day, hunted out a shabby calf volume from the back of an upper shelf of his library.
�Yes—here it is. What does it call itself? A History of the Assizes of the Duchy of Brittany. Quimper, 1702. The book was written about a hundred years later than the Kerfol affair; but I believe the account is transcribed pretty literally from the judicial records. Anyhow, it�s queer reading. And there�s a Herv� de Lanrivain mixed up in it—not exactly my style, as you�ll see. But then he�s only a collateral. Here, take the book up to bed with you. I don�t exactly remember the details; but after you�ve read it I�ll bet anything you�ll leave your light burning all night!�
I left my light burning all night, as he had predicted; but it was chiefly because, till near dawn, I was absorbed in my reading. The account of the trial of Anne de Cornault, wife of the lord of Kerfol, was long and closely printed. It was, as my friend had said, probably an almost literal transcription of what took place in the court-room; and the trial lasted nearly a month. Besides, the type of the book was detestable...
At first I thought of translating the old record literally. But it is full of wearisome repetitions, and the main lines of the story are forever straying off into side issues. So I have tried to disentangle it, and give it here in a simpler form. At times, however, I have reverted to the text because no other words could have conveyed so exactly the sense of what I felt at Kerfol; and nowhere have I added anything of my own.