"Perhaps my friendly ghost has something to do with the Love Story of the East Room and the Duel in the Wine Cellars.... Yes?" and he waited for an answer.
"Go on!" cried Nance gleefully, looking at me with an appeal to share her delight in the adventures of the old house.
"Prosper tells me," continued the Abbé, "that every midsummer's eve—you know I am always away in midsummer and I only know this of old Prosper—there is a beautiful quaintly dressed lady of the long ago who makes her abode in the great east room. She is a very weepy, pretty lady, at first, Prosper asserts. Then, when a great splendid buck of a fellow in laces and frills and long-plaited powdered hair comes climbing up by way of the portico, she quickly becomes very beautiful and the light of her eyes brightens the whole room. In fact it is this very brilliancy which attracts another gentleman who comes from the hallway. Immediately, with much bowing, he invites the gallant cavalier off to the wine cellars, where blood is spilled.... Now I tell Prosper it is merely rats he hears with his deaf old ears.
"'Non, Monsieur,' he insists; 'what of the casks of good red wine I find spilled upon the floor the morning following midsummer eve?'"
"He's right, Monsieur," said Nance simply. "I myself have seen the light and believed it elf-fire."
"I believe you, my dear-a," he replied.
"Then there is the cabinet with the hidden drawer, and the secret stairway we shall climb when I am well.... Ah, it is at the top of the magic stairway where old Jacques finds his forest of Arden.... Some day you shall know.... There are the merry ghosts of two happy children in the very heydey of youth. There is the spook of an old vagabond who sleeps in dingles in phantom greenwoods. There, my children, are a thousand dreams of mine: the ghosts of yesterday; there the little narrow streets of old Paris—St. Jacques, Rue de l'Abbé de l'Epee, the Rue de la Fouarre; there, gentle Amiens and her great cathedral; a long, white road—le trimard—through Picardy; a tiny garret in the Rue St. Jacques, where first I knew all the bright hopes and brave fancies of youth. All—all these and a thousand more at the top of my secret stairs, and some day, le bon Dieu knows how soon, I shall bequeath it all—all to you!"
Then Nance bade him be quiet and began to smooth his brow with her hand. Presently he fell into a troubled sleep, murmuring of roads and rivers and tree-clad hills.