Sure enough, he spied at last the red and green weathercock peeping above some trees loaded with black cherries—for that is the country where they grow. It is the mountain parishes which send all the wild cherries you see laid out on straw at the Pardons of the Léonnais, and which lovers bring to the pennérèz[[146]] in their great felt hats. Mao crossed the lawn set out with walnuts, knocked at the smallest door he could find in the manor-house, and said, as the saint bade him, that he came for what they knew.
The gentleman was told at once. He came shaking his head, for he was old and feeble, but leaning upon his granddaughter, who was young and fresh; so that to look at them you would have said it was a ruined wall held up by a blooming honeysuckle.
Both, with the utmost politeness, bade the young man come in; he was given a carpet-covered stool by the old man’s arm-chair, and served with sweet cider while supper was getting ready.
Mao wondered greatly at this greeting, and could not keep his eyes off the young girl as she ran about getting everything ready and singing like a lark. The more he looked the prettier he found her, and his heart beat like a clock.
“Alas!” he thought, “he alone may call himself happy who will be able to talk with the pennérèz of the manor behind the gable.”[[147]]
At last, when supper was over, the grandfather had Liçzenn (that was the young girl’s name) clear away the things, and said to Mao:
“We have given you of our best and according to our means, young man, but not according to our wish, for the house of Tréhouar has long suffered from a grievous wound. Once upon a time we reckoned here as many as twenty horses and forty cows; but the fiend has made himself master of cattle-sheds and stables; cows and horses have vanished one after another and as often as they have been replaced, until I have sunk all my savings. All our prayers to conjure away the destroying spirit have been in vain; we have had to resign ourselves, and for lack of live-stock my lands are now lying fallow. I had some hopes of my nephew Matelinn, who has gone to the French wars; but as he never came back I have caused it to be given out through the country, at sermons and elsewhere, that the man who freed the manor should have Liçzenn to wife, and my whole estate after me. But all who have come here to this end and watched in the stable have disappeared like the cows and horses. I pray God you may have better hap.”
Mao, whom the remembrance of his vision emboldened to take the risk, answered that, with the grace of the Virgin Mary, he hoped to overthrow the hidden demon. With that he asked for some fire to keep his limbs from getting stiff, took his frappe-tête, and besought Liçzenn to think of him in her prayers.
The place to which they brought him was a great shed divided into two parts for the cows and the horses; but it was wholly empty, and spiders had spun their webs upon the feed-racks. Mao lit a fire of furze upon the great stones which served for pavement, and betook himself to his prayers.
For the first quarter of an hour he heard only the crackling of the flame; for the second quarter of an hour he heard only the wind whistling sadly through the cracks of the door; for the third quarter of an hour he heard only the little death’s hammer[[148]] which sounded in the wood-work; but at the fourth quarter a muffled sound was heard under the pavement, and at the end of the building in the darkest corner he saw the largest stone rise slowly and a dragon’s head come out of the ground; it was as big as a cheese-trough, flat like a viper’s, and all about its forehead flashed a row of parti-colored eyes.