From the harbor Michael had often, above the heights of the ravine, seen this pantheon which was to serve him now as a place for meeting Spadoni. It was a simple block of masonry, with white-washed walls, four pinnacles at the angles, and a cupola of black tile. From a distance it looked like a Mohammedan hermitage, the tomb of some saint of Islam, and the similarity was carried out by groups of palm trees in the neighboring gardens.
Castro had often made him laugh by telling him the story of the dead General and his wealthy neighbors. The owners of the villa could not sleep with a dead man on the other side of the wall, and moreover, it was a nameless dead man, which made it all the more creepy and mysterious.
Nobody could remember the name of this gentleman, who had commanded thousands of men, and was still exerting his will power on the living. The owners decided to rent the villa with all its elegant furnishings for a modest sum, and at first, the ladies who were gambling in the Casino, quarreled as to who should get it. How wonderful it would be to live in a little palace adorned by famous Parisian decorators, and with a magnificent view, all for five hundred francs a month! But the renters hastened to give up this bargain to others. Imagine having to pass the General's mausoleum at midnight, on returning from the Casino! And think of not being able to open one's window blinds without having to look that corpse in the face. Besides, the spiteful tongues of the women gave each successive tenant the nickname of: "The guardian of the tomb."
Then Spadoni appeared. Castro had a vague idea that the pianist had paid the first month's rent, but he was not sure. What he knew for certain was that he had not paid any more. The owners, living in Paris, had finally accepted the situation, considering the pianist an unpaid caretaker for that house, which had come to inspire them with terror.
The Prince descended the wide road between garden balustrades and walls of rock broken by tufts of flowers hanging from the crevices. On seeing the sepulchre at close hand, he understood why all the tenants had taken flight. The General had known how to do things. The pinnacles, as well as the iron cross which surmounted the cupola, were adorned with skulls and cross-bones; and these funereal symbols, by force of contrast, made a still deeper impression because of the green splendor of the adjoining gardens under the bright blue skies and the dazzling sunlight, with the smiling harbor in the background, and the ruffled surface of the violet sea. The gate of the nameless mausoleum had not been opened for many years, and the wind had heaped the dirt against the underpinnings. Between the iron gate and the walls a thick, wild growth of vegetation had appeared, a diminutive forest, in the dense growth of which insects made war and devoured one another after sending forth endless flying and creeping expeditions against all the neighboring houses.
Lubimoff passed close to the mausoleum in order to reach the entrance of the villa, a handsome building in the Tuscan style of architecture. The gate was a complicated piece of iron work; the windows had stained glass figures; the gray walls were encrusted with marble bas-reliefs, and ancient escutcheons.
He knocked in vain with the iron dragon that served as a knocker. Finally from an adjoining alley-way, between two walls, appeared a woman with dishevelled hair, holding an infant in her arms. It was a neighbor, who acted as a servant for Spadoni, when he stayed in the house. The arrival of a visitor was an event for her.
"Yes, he is in," she said, "don't you hear him?"
As a matter of fact, Michael had heard the sound of a piano, deadened by the thick walls.
The woman, convinced that the artist would never hear the blows of the knocker, disappeared around the corner. Shortly afterward, her head and the child she was carrying in her arms appeared above the edge of the wall.