"Here are the keys; but my dear Monsieur Sylvain of the good Lord, don't go there! It is just the time for the deviltry to begin."
"What deviltry, my good friends?" said the marquis laughingly; "what sort of creatures are these wicked devils?"
"I have never seen them, monsieur, nor wanted to see them," said the farmer; "but I hear them well enough, I hear them too well! Some groan and others sing. There's laughter, then yelling and swearing and weeping till daybreak, when they all fly away through the air; for it is securely locked, and no human being can enter without leave or help from me."
"May it not be that your farm-hands go there to amuse themselves, or some thief to prevent you detecting his thievery?"
"No, monsieur, no! Our workmen and servants are so frightened that with all your money you couldn't hire them to go within two gunshots of the château after sunset; indeed, you see they no longer sleep in our house, because they say it's too near that infernal building. They all sleep in the barn yonder at the end of the yard."
"So much the better for the little secret we have together to-night," said the marquis; "but so much the better too, perhaps, for those who play the part of ghosts for the sole purpose of robbing you!"
"What could they steal, pray, Monsieur Sylvain? There's nothing in the château. When I saw that the devil used torches there, I was afraid of a fire, and I took out my whole crop, except a few little fagots and a dozen bundles of hay and straw, which I left in order not to make them too angry, for they say that imps like to play about in the hay and the branches; and, to tell the truth, I found it all tossed about and trampled; it was as if fifty living men had walked over it."
The marquis knew Faraudet to be very truthful and incapable of inventing anything whatsoever to avoid doing him a service.
He began to think therefore that, if lights were seen in the old manor, if voices were heard there, and above all, if feet or bodies trampled and disturbed the straw, there was more reality than deviltry in that state of affairs, and that the château, which the farmer and his wife confessed that they had not dared to enter for more than six weeks, might very well be used already as a refuge by fugitives.
"Whether they be maleficent or congenial, I propose to see them," he said to himself.