I must confess that at this moment Mlle. de Porhoët reminded me of the cruel fairy of folklore, who shuts the princess up in a lonely tower and imposes a succession of extraordinary and impossible tasks on her.
"Last night," she continued, "I dreamed that the key of my Spanish treasure lay in this packet. So you will very much oblige me by examining it at once. Afterward I hope you will do me the honour to share a frugal repast in the shade of my arbour."
There was no help for it. I obeyed, and I need not say that the wonderful packet No. 116 contained, like its predecessors, nothing more valuable than the dust of centuries. Precisely at noon, the old lady came to offer me her arm and conduct me formally to a little box-bordered garden which, with a bit of adjoining meadow, now constitutes the sole domain of the Porhoëts. The table was set out under an arched bower of foliage, and through the leaves the sunshine of a fine summer's day dappled the spotless, sweet-smelling table-cloth. I had done justice to the chicken, the fresh salad, and the bottle of old Bordeaux, which made up the menu of the banquet, when Mlle. de Porhoët, who seemed charmed with my appetite, turned the conversation on to the Laroque family.
"I will own," she said to me, "that I do not care for the old buccaneer. When he first came here he had a large and favourite ape, which he dressed up like a servant, and which he seemed to be able to communicate with perfectly. The animal was a nuisance to the whole country, and only a man without education or decency could have kept it. I agreed when they told me that it was an ape, but, as a fact, I have always believed that it was a negro, more especially as I had always suspected its master of having trafficked in that commodity in Africa. But M. Laroque, the son, was a good sort of man, and quite a gentleman. As to the ladies—I refer, of course, to Mme. Laroque and her daughter, and in no way to the widow Aubry, an extremely common person—as to the ladies, I say, they deserve every good thing one can say of them."
Just then we heard the hoofs of a horse on the path that runs outside the garden wall, and the next moment some one was knocking sharply at a small door near the arbour.
"Yes," said Mlle. de Porhoët. "Who goes there?"
I looked up, and saw a black plume above the top of the wall.
"Open," said a gay voice outside, full of musical intonations. "Open. 'Tis the fortune of France!"
"What? Is it you, my darling?" said the old lady. "Quick, cousin, run!"
As I opened the door Mervyn rushed between my legs, nearly throwing me down. Mlle. Marguerite was tying up her horse to the fence by his reins.