“Yes. At the age of six you made a progress through it. To-day it belongs to you by the will of the old Marquess.”
“Quick, Ralph! Quick! Let me see it—or rather let me see it again.”
“First of all let’s have some food,” he said. “I’m dying of hunger. Besides, the visit to your kingdom will not last long, and it must not last long. That which has been hidden for centuries must not be revealed definitely in the light of day till you shall be mistress of your kingdom.”
As was her custom, she asked no questions about the way in which he had acted. What had become of Jodot and William? Had he any news of the Marquess of Talencay? She preferred to know nothing and let him guide her.
A minute later they came out of the grotto together, and Aurelie, once more overwhelmed by emotion, rested her head against Ralph’s arm and murmured:
“That’s really it, Ralph! That is just what I saw so long ago—on the second day—with my mother.” [[307]]
CHAPTER XIV
THE SPRING OF JOUVENCE
Strange spectacle! Below them in a deep arena from which the water had retired, over all the ground in the circle of cliffs were the ruins of monuments and temples, still standing, but with truncated columns, dislocated steps, scattered arches, roofless, without pediments or cornices, a forest decapitated by lightning, but a forest the dead trees of which held still all the nobility and all the beauty of ardent life. Through the whole of it ran the Roman road, a triumphal road, bordered with broken statues, framed by symmetrical temples, it passed between the pillars of demolished arches and came up the bank to the grotto in which they offered their sacrifices.