Some days passed without any event which could satisfy either my love or my curiosity. Had Lerne grown suspicious of me, and contrived to have all my time taken up?

In the morning, he would invite me to accompany him—one day on foot, and another in the motor-car. During those outings we would talk at random of scientific matters, and he would question me as if he really wished to judge of my capabilities.

With the motor-car we used to cover much ground. In our walks, my uncle usually took the road which led straight to Grey. He would often stop, the better to hold forth, and never went beyond the skirts of the wood. Often in the midst of a dissertation or a jest, after we had started walking or driving, Lerne would suddenly go back, distrusting the people he had left at Fonval.

He also organized my afternoons for me; sometimes I was charged with a message for the town or the village, sometimes forced to go off by myself on some errand. I had either to fill up my tank without question, or put on my walking boots.

Lerne always watched me go, and at nightfall, standing on his doorstep, he exacted from me an account of my day. As the case might be, I had either to give a report of what I had done, or describe places.

Now, my uncle was not, as a rule, familiar with places, it is true, but I could not tell which ones, and so any made-up story would have been dangerous. I therefore conscientiously explored the forest and the countryside from dawn to dusk.

And yet, I should have liked to go to Emma’s room. I had calculated its place in the topography of the castle by the number of windows which were, or were not shut, and I knew them all thoroughly.

The whole left wing always remained closed. In the right wing, the ground floor, and, of the six bedrooms above, only three remained open for daily use. Mine was in the projecting part of the building, and, at the other end, the room of my Aunt Lidivine opened on the central corridor, and communicated with Lerne’s, so that Emma must have succeeded my aunt in my aunt’s own bed. The very thought of it maddened me, and I waited impatiently for the opportunity I sought.

But the Professor was keeping watch!

Under his pitiless tyranny, I saw Mlle. Bourdichet only at meal-times. We both put on a detached air. I now ventured to look at her, but I did not dare to speak to her. She persisted in a most absolute silence, so much so, that, in absence of conversation, I had to judge of her nature by her bearing, but I must admit that, however gross may be the human functions of feeding oneself on dead beasts and withered plants, there are two methods of eating. This lady thought nothing of taking the chicken bone, or cutlet bone in her fingers, and every time she gave herself up to this pleasure, I fancied I should hear her say, “My little duck,” in her plebeian voice.

Between Emma and me, Lerne fidgeted about. He crumbled the bread, and dallied with his fork, and suppressed anger would make him bring down his fist on the cloth till the cups and glasses rattled.

One day, by mischance, my foot knocked against him. The Doctor suspected this innocent foot of light behavior. He attributed to it telegraphic intentions, and, persuaded that it had communicated through its toe some pedestrian and stealthy love-sign, he decreed at once that Mlle. Bourdichet was feeling unwell, and would thenceforth take her meals in her own room.

So two passions occupied my thoughts—hatred of Lerne, and love of Emma, and I resolved on the most audacious plans to satisfy them both. It so happened that on that very day, my uncle said to me suddenly that he wanted to take me in the car to Nanthel, where he had business. I fancied I saw a chance of escape from his vigilance.

The next day was a Sunday, and Grey was celebrating the Feast of its Patron Saint. I should know how to profit by that!

“With pleasure, Uncle,” I said. “We shall start in the car, barring accidents.”

“I should prefer to go in the car to Grey, and then take the train to Nanthel. That will be the surest way.”

That suited my book admirably.

“Very well, uncle.”

“The train starts from Grey at 8 o’clock. We shall come back by the 5.13. There is none before that.”

On arriving at the village, we heard a noise of bustle, with, every now and again, the lowing of cattle. A horse neighed, and some sheep were bleating.

I had some difficulty in making my way across the Square of Grey-l’Abbaye, which had now been turned into a Fair, and was swarming with a good-tempered and slow-moving crowd.

In the spaces between the shooting galleries, and other shabby booths, they had inclosed the cattle which were for sale. Rough hands were calculating the weight of udders, were opening jaws by which a beast’s age can be read, slipping their hands along their muscles to judge of their condition, and so on.

The horse dealers were talking big, and between two rows of patient peasants, grooms were trotting about heavy cart-horses, and riding-whips were cracking all round.

The first man drunk that day, stumbled up, addressing me as “Citizen.”

We went straight on in the semi-silence of this Ardennes Market. The village inn was already full of people, singing, and not yet fighting. The church-bells were ringing their chimes of warning, and in the center of the Square, a little white building, decorated with greenery, showed that the Municipal Band would soon be adding its very simple strains to the hubbub of the fÊte.

When we got to the station (this was the moment I had chosen to act), I said:

“Uncle, shall I accompany you in your rounds at Nanthel?”

“Certainly not. Why?”

“Well, Uncle, in my dislike for cafÉs, taverns and public-houses, I shall ask you to leave me here, where I shall wait for you just as easily as in the shop in Nanthel.”

My uncle replied:

“But, you are not obliged....”“To begin with, I find the Grey Festival attracts me. I should like to watch the crowds a little longer. On such a day one gets the liveliest impressions of the manners of a people, and I feel, to-day, that I have the soul of an ethnologist.”

My uncle said, “You are joking, or else it is a mere whim.”

“In the second place, Uncle, whom could I trust with my car? The inn-keeper? The drunken tenant of a hovel full of clodhoppers in their cups? You surely do not imagine that I am going to leave a car worth twenty-five thousand francs, exposed for nine hours by the clock, to the tricks of a village on the spree! No, no, I prefer to watch my car myself.”

My uncle was not convinced of my sincerity. He wished to checkmate the little trick which I might be planning of going back to Fonval, either in my motor-car, or on a borrowed bicycle, with the intention of coming back to Grey in time for the 5.15—and that was just exactly the plan which I had thought of. The accursed savant nearly upset everything.

“You are right,” said he coldly, and he set his foot on the ground, and amid the crowd of holiday travelers in their Sunday best, raised the bonnet of the car, and looked at the engine minutely. I felt quite uncomfortable.

My uncle took out his knife—took the carburetor, and slipped some of the pieces into his pocket, and addressed me thus:

“There is your car, brought to a standstill,” said he, “but as you might make off in another way, I am going to give you something to do. On my return, you must show me the carburetor, completely restored, and fitted up with pieces of your own make. The blacksmith has not yet shut up his forge—he will lend you an anvil and vise; but he is a fool, and quite unable to help you. There will be enough there to keep you amused until 5.14.”

Perceiving that I did not seem to mind, he went on in a constrained tone:

“I must ask your pardon. Please do not doubt that, all this is only to assure your future by protecting the secret of our work. Good-by.”

The train carried him off.

I had let him talk without showing any signs of annoyance; and indeed, without feeling any, for, being but a poor chauffeur, detesting grease and scars on my hands, and obliged by my uncle’s will to do without a mechanic, I had brought with me, in the boot of my car, several spare pieces, amongst which, was a complete carburetor, ready to be put in its place. Ignorance stood me in better stead than professional skill, so I set to work at once, being in no wise disturbed, and merely anxious about the inmates of Fonval left to their own devices.

Presently, having garaged my car in a clump of trees, I climbed over the park wall, and I should have climbed straight to Emma’s room, if a melancholy barking had not sounded in the direction of the gray buildings.

“The laboratory! Nell!” This curious fact of a dog being chained up in a laboratory made me hesitate between the attractiveness of the mystery, and that of Emma; but this time, a sort of instinct of self-preservation aroused by the unknown, and the danger one attributes to it, was bound to carry the day.

I made my way towards the gray buildings. Besides, the Germans would no doubt be there, and their presence would prevent me from dawdling. So it was merely a matter of snatching a few minutes from love-making.

As I passed the Yellow Room, I put my ear to the shutters in order to assure myself that Macbeth was alone. He was so, a circumstance which filled my heart with a vast satisfaction.

Some white clouds were floating in a cold sky. The wind was coming from Grey-l’Abbaye, and brought me through the gorge the monotonous sound of the church bells. Endlessly they repeated the same three notes, thus performing the chime of the ArlÉsienne. I was gay! To this sacred accompaniment I whistled the melody played by the orchestra, and the juxtaposition of the two was like placing a modern statuette on a Gothic pedestal.

In front of the laboratory, on the other side of the road, there was a wood. I made tacks to reach it, having formed my plan of assault. In the middle of this wood, I used to possess an old friend—a fir tree. Its projecting branches formed a spiral staircase. It completely dominated the buildings. No laboratory could have been better placed, or more accessible, and in the old days I used to play there at being a sailor on the yard-arms.

The tree offered me a perch, rather short, no doubt, but still, well padded. On the upper branches, a relic awaited me, made of cords and rotten planks—the cross-trees! Who would have said that one day I, who used to spy out continents, archipelagoes—phantasies with some likelihood about them—should now be there as a spy for things so fabulously unreal? My glances turned towards the ground.

As I have said, the laboratory was composed of a courtyard between two blocks of buildings. The one on the left was pierced with large bay windows on its one story, and on its ground floor. It seemed to me to be merely two large rooms—one above the other. I only saw the higher one, which was elaborately equipped—an apothecary’s cupboard, marble tables covered with bulbs, bottles and retorts, cases (open), sets of polished instruments, and two indescribable pieces of apparatus of glass and nickel, which recalled nothing analogous, except, perhaps, vaguely, the round globes screwed to a stand on which cafÉ waiters lay their napkins.

The other block which was beyond my range, looked from the outside like an ordinary dwelling-house, and was evidently the place where the two assistants lodged.

But, what I had taken for a farmyard on the day of my arrival, took up all my attention.

What a miserable farmyard! Its walls were fitted with wire-netted compartments of various sizes, which rose, piled on one another, to an immense height.

In these lodges, each duly labeled, rabbits, guinea-pigs, rats, cats and other animals which I could not distinguish because of the distance, moved about painfully, or remained lying, half-hidden under the straw.

Some litter, however, was jumping about, but I could not perceive the cause. A nest of mice, I presumed.

The last cage on the right served as a hen-house. Contrary to custom, they had locked up the poultry in it.Everything looked mute and melancholy. Four hens and a cock, of rare breed, were carrying on a more cheerful kind of life, and strutted about cackling on the concrete floor, pecking at it persistently, in the vain hope of discovering corn or worms.

In the middle of the yard there was a large hollow square of gratings. These were the kennels.

Between the two rows of compartments, like philosophers that were both Cynics and Peripatetics, dogs, with a resigned look, walked up and down—ordinary terriers, butcher’s lurchers, watch-dogs, bull-terriers, a ruffianly bulldog and mongrel bloodhounds—in fact, a whole pack of coarse, good-for-nothing-but-fidelity beasts.

They were roaming up and down, and gave this courtyard the appearance of the yard of a veterinary hospital. And this is where things took on a somber coloring. Of all those beasts very few seemed healthy. Most of them were wearing bandages—on the back, round the neck, on the back of the head, and more especially round the head. One hardly saw any of them through the grating, which did not wear a piece of white linen rolled up into a cap, hood or turban, and this procession of sorrowful dogs, with their absurd headdresses of linen bandages, and each with a label attached to its neck, was a most funereal sight to see.

Most of those poor wretches were smitten with some infirmity. One would fall on his muzzle at almost every step; another was limping; the head of a third was shaking and quivering like that of a palsied old man. A mastiff stumbled about, whining without apparent reason, and suddenly it would utter a loud death-like howl.

Nell was not there!

I perceived in a shady corner an aviary—silent and with no bird trying its flight. As far as I could make out, the occupants belonged to the commoner families of birds, and there were sparrows in great numbers. The greater portion of them, however, were a white-headed species, but I did not know enough of ornithology to recognize them from such a height.

The smell of carbolic came up to me.

Oh, for the scents of the farmyard, the cooing of pigeons on the moss-clad roofs, the cock’s cock-a-doodle-doo, the yelp of the dog tugging at its chain, the squadrons of geese with outspread wings! I kept thinking of you, in the presence of this lazar-house!

A sad farmyard, indeed, with its severe arrangement, and its patients ticketed like the plants in a hothouse.

Suddenly there was a bustling. The dogs went back to their kennels, and the poultry took refuge under a trough. Nothing budged again. The aviary and the cages seemed to contain nothing but stuffed beasts.

Karl, the German, with his Kaiser-like mustaches, had come out of the building on the left. He opened one of the compartments, thrust out his hand towards a ball of hair which was curled up in it, and drew out a monkey.

The animal, which was a chimpanzee, struggled. The assistant dragged it off, and disappeared with it by the way he had come. The mastiff gave a long howl.

Then began a bustling in the apparatus-room, and I saw that the three assistants had just come in. They stretched out the gagged monkey on the table, and fastened it solidly down; William thrust something under its nose.

Karl, with a morphia syringe, pricked the chimpanzee’s flank, then the tall old man, Johann, approached. He put his golden spectacles straight, with a hand which held a knife, and bent over the patient.

I cannot explain the operation so rapid was it, but in less than no time, the face of the chimpanzee was nothing but a hideous blur of red.

I turned away, sickened with a sense of discomfort—a discomfort caused by seeing blood. At last I turned my face back again. It was too late; the sun was striking on the windows, and I could not see for the dazzle; but in the courtyard, the dogs had left their boxes, and amongst them now Donovan Macbeth’s dog Nell was prowling about.

She was coughing. Her hairless skin no longer suggested the fine coat of a St. Bernard. The superb creature was nothing but a great carcass, whose leanness contrasted with the comparative plump shapes of her companions.

Nell, too, wore a bandage on the back of her neck. What had Lerne devised to make her suffer since the night of their adventure? What diabolical invention was he trying upon her?

Nell seemed to be reflecting; her very manner of walking suggested consternation. She held aloof from the other dogs, and when a certain bulldog accosted her in the way of gallantry, she started back with a look so fierce, and a hoarse cry so terrible, that the other hurried off to the depths of its lair, whilst the rest of the pack, put out of countenance, raised their bedizened heads.

The coy Nell went her way.

What was I doing, remaining there! In spite of my haste to shorten this reconnaissance, and betake myself to other pastimes, something held me back—something inexplicable in the behavior of this poor dog.

At this moment, a “quick-step” played by the band at Grey-l’Abbaye, reached Fonval on the wings of the wind. My fingers, of their own accord, beat time on the branches of my observation post, and I perceived that Nell had quickened her walk and was marching in time to the rhythm of the music!

I then remembered that, in talking of Nell, Emma had alluded to her performing-dog tricks. Was this a circus exercise taught by Macbeth to his St. Bernard? It did not seem to me that in the absence of the trainer such a dance could have been executed, and that an auditory sensation could arouse, in the case of an animal, those mechanical movements which have always been our prerogative, and are the result of habits more complex than those of instincts.

The music died away as the wind fell. The dog sat down, raised her eyes, and saw me.

“Good Heavens, she is going to bark and give the alarm...!” Not at all. She looked at me without fear or wrath—with eyes, the memory of which will always be with me—then shaking her great shaggy head, she began to groan gently, making a vague gesture with her paw, then she resumed her round, still murmuring, and casting furtive glances in my direction, as if she desired to make herself understood without drawing the attention of the Germans.

(This, of course, is a mere descriptive phrase, but one might, all the same, have imagined that the creature wanted to speak, so human were the inflections of her moans, which roughly formed a long, gutteral and monotonous phrase, in which there always occurred the syllables, “Mabet, Mabet.” The whole thing made a gurgling sound, rather like English words badly articulated.)

The entry on the scene of the three assistants put a stop to this curious phenomenon.

They crossed the courtyard, and all the dogs—Nell at the head—slunk to shelter. Wilhelm, as he passed, flung over the grating of the kennel a chunk of meat—the body of the monkey, skinned, the hairy part hanging attached.

It fell heavily. It was dead!

The Germans then went into the building on the right, whose chimney was smoking. Then, one by one, the dogs came and sniffed at the remains of the chimpanzee. The bulldog gave the first bite, and then came the whole pack, growling ferociously.

The muzzles of the lame ones were soon dyed red, as their gnashing teeth tore to bits this pitiful caricature of a child’s body. Nell, only, in front of her kennel, with her paws crossed, disdained the feast, and looked at me with her beautiful eyes. I fancied I had discovered why she was so thin.Upon this, a window opened, through which I perceived a table set for three. The assistants were going to lunch in front of my wood. It was time for me to withdraw.

Here I committed an unpardonable piece of folly. I ought to have set out on my campaign against the old shoe—that was elementary. It appeared to me, wrongly, that I had made a supreme concession to prudence—that an elastic boot has many titles to be considered merely an elastic boot, and not a buried man—not even a buried body; and that, to a generous heart a pretty girl is more important than all knickknacks.

I reviewed all these reasons, with the result that I turned towards the chÂteau.

The bedroom of my Aunt Lidivine now served as a lumber-room. One would have said it was the wardrobe of a lady of fortune. Several wicker lay-figures covered with extremely elegant toilettes, formed a crowd of armless and headless coquettes. The mantelpiece and tables were like a dressmaker’s show-cases, where feathers and ribbons go to make up those tiny or huge contraptions, which only become pretty hats once they are on the head. A battalion of dress shoes were fitted on their trees, and a thousand feminine trifles were heaped up everywhere, in the midst of a delicate and suggestive aroma, which was the one Emma loved.

Poor dear Aunt! I should have preferred your room to have been still further profaned, and that Mlle. Bourdichet had made it hers, rather than to hear laughter in the next one—that of your husband; for this left one no illusions.

On my appearance, Emma and Barbe seemed stupefied. The girl immediately understood, and began to laugh. She was lunching in bed, and with a turn of the wrist, she twisted her flaming Bacchante hair into a knot.

I saw the outline of her arm through the sleeve, and she did not think of closing her nightdress.

A table covered with bottles and brushes had been pushed against the bed.

Barbe, who was serving her mistress, cut huge slices out of a ham. My first thought was that Barbe would be much in my way.

“And what about Lerne?” said Emma.

I reassured her. He would only come back at 5 o’clock. I guaranteed that. She gave that little cheerful cluck, which is the sob of joy.

Barbe, who was obviously devoted to her, got so uproariously delighted that her whole person took part in the festival.

It was half past twelve. We had four hours before us. I suggested that that was rather short, but “Let us have lunch, will you, dearie?” said she.

I had nothing better to do for the moment, because of Barbe, and I sat down face to face with her.