He made nothing of the two hundred and fifty yards after an expedition so fruitful of results. He was at the grotto in a few minutes. He went straight into it, with the lantern in the bow.
“Victory!” he exclaimed. “You heard my signal? Victory!”
A cheerful light filled the small retreat in which they had so nearly met their death. The hammock stretched from wall to wall. Aurelie was sleeping peacefully in it. Trusting to the promise of her friend, convinced that nothing was impossible to him, freed from her anguish at her danger and from the jaws of that death she had so desired, she had succumbed to her weariness. [[305]]Perhaps, too, she had heard the noise of the two reports. In any case the noise he made did not awaken her.
When she opened her eyes next morning she saw surprising things in the grotto in which the light of day mingled with the light of the lantern. The water had flowed away. In the bottom of a boat resting against the wall, Ralph, dressed in a shepherd’s overcoat and linen trousers which he must have taken from the heap of clothes of the old Marquess on the shelf, was sleeping as deeply as she had slept herself.
For a long while she gazed at him with loving eyes, in which there also shone a restrained curiosity. Who was this extraordinary being, whose will opposed the decrees of destiny and whose acts assumed the very appearance of miracles? She had heard, without any distress—what did it matter to her?—Marescal’s accusation and the name of Arsène Lupin the Commissary had snarled at him. Was she to believe that Ralph was no other than Arsène Lupin?
“Who are you? You whom I love more than my life?” she thought. “Who are you? You who unceasingly save me as if it were your only mission? Who are you?”
“The blue bird.”
Ralph awoke, and the unspoken question of Aurelie was so clear that he answered without hesitation:
“The blue bird charged with the task of bringing [[306]]happiness to good and trusting little girls, to defend them against ogres and wicked fairies, and to conduct them to their kingdom.”
“Have I then a kingdom, dearest?”