Once I lifted my head and insisted,
"It can't be true!"
"Monsieur," the goose girl asserted solemnly, "it is true. The blessed St. Alpin, my patron, forget me if I tell you a lie."
Around the shadowed spot where I sat I heard trees whispering on the hills, and a cart rumbling along the hardened dust of the road.
"Monsieur," spoke the goose girl out of her good heart, "if you want to go to his chapel I will show you the path."
She tied a string around the leg of the wicked gander and attached him to the tree, shaking a wand at him in warning. He nipped her sleeve, and hissed, and hopped, his wives remonstrating softly; but his guardian left him bound and carried her knitting down a valley to a stream, across the bridge, and near an opening in the bushes at the foot of a hill.
"Go all to the right, monsieur," she said, "and you will come to the chapel where the Du Plessys are buried."
I gave her the largest coin in my pocket, and she flew back as well as the spirit of childhood could fly in wooden shoes. All the geese, formed in a line, waddled to meet her, perhaps bearing a memorial of wrongs from their husband.
The climb was steep, rounding a darkened ferny shoulder of lush forest, yet promising more and more a top of sunlight. At the summit was a carriage road which ascended by some easier plane. Keeping all to the right as the goose girl directed, I found a chapel like a shrine.
It was locked. Through the latticed door I could see an altar, whereunder the last Du Plessy who had come to rest there, doubtless lay with his kin.