Sitting near Josephine, his eyes fixed on the picture which he had drawn, Ralph continued in a low voice with a restrained exaltation:
“Yes, those monks were very imprudent to trust such a secret to the guard of so transparent a word. But what ingenious and charming poets they were! What a delightful thought to associate Heaven itself with their earthly belongings! Masters of contemplation, great astronomers like their Chaldean ancestors they drew their inspiration from on high; the courses of the stars guided their existence; and they called on the constellations themselves to watch over their treasures. Who knows if the situation of their seven abbeys was not chosen at the beginning of things to reproduce on the soil of Normandy the gigantic figure of the Great Bear? Who knows——”
The lyric effusion of Ralph was truly justified; but he could not bring it to its proper end. If he was distrusting Leonard, he had forgotten Josephine. Suddenly she struck him on the head with her life-preserver.
It was indeed the last thing he was looking for, although he knew that these treacherous attacks were a habit of hers. Stunned, he doubled up on his chair, then fell on his knees, then rolled over and lay prone.
He murmured in a shaky voice: “It’s true, begad! I was no longer taboo.” Then with the gutter-snipe’s chuckle which he doubtless inherited from his father, Theophrastus Lupin, he said again: “The damned jade! Not even respect for genius! You savage little beast, have you indeed a stone where your heart should be?... All the worse for you, Josephine. We would have shared the treasure. Now I’ll keep the lot of it.”
He lost consciousness.
CHAPTER XIII.
THE STRONG-BOX OF THE MONKS
It was but a passing paralysis such as a boxer suffers from a knock-out blow. But when Ralph recovered consciousness he found without the slightest surprise that he was in the same situation as Beaumagnan, like him bound, and like him set with his back against the wall.
He was very little more surprised to see Josephine stretched on two chairs in front of the door, a victim of one of those nervous attacks which too violent emotions, too prolonged always brought on. The blow she had struck Ralph had thrown her into one of them. Leonard was tending her, holding a bottle of smelling-salts to her nostrils.
He must have summoned one of his confederates, for Ralph saw the young man enter whom he knew by the name of Dominique, the young man who had looked after the carriage in front of the house of Bridget Rousselin.