"Yes, your honor.Does it please your honor that I should accompany you?""You or another, it is of very little consequence, provided I have a light.""It is strange!" thought Athos, "what a singular voice that man has!""Some fire, you fellows!" cried the fisherman; "come, make haste!"Then addressing his companion nearest to him in a low voice:
-- "Get a light, Menneville," said he, "and hold yourself ready for anything."One of the fishermen struck light from a stone, set fire to some tinder, and by the aid of a match lit a lantern.The light immediately spread all over the tent.
"Are you ready, monsieur?" said Monk to Athos, who had turned away, not to expose his face to the light.
"Yes, general," replied he.
"Ah! the French gentleman!" said the leader of the fishermen to himself."Peste! I have a great mind to charge you with the commission, Menneville; he may know me.Light! light!"This dialogue was pronounced at the back of the tent, and in so low a voice that Monk could not hear a syllable of it; he was, besides, talking with Athos.Menneville got himself ready in the meantime, or rather received the orders of his leader.
"Well?" said Monk.
"I am ready, general," said the fisherman.
Monk, Athos, and the fisherman left the tent.
"It is impossible!" thought Athos."What dream could put that into my head?""Go forward; follow the middle causeway, and stretch out your legs," said Monk to the fisherman.
They were not twenty paces on their way when the same shadow that had appeared to enter the tent came out of it again, crawled along as far as the piles, and, protected by that sort of parapet placed along the causeway, carefully observed the march of the general.All three disappeared in the night haze.They were walking towards Newcastle, the white stones of which appeared to them like sepulchres.
After standing for a few seconds under the porch, they penetrated into the interior.The door had been broken open by hatchets.A post of four men slept in safety in a corner, so certain were they that the attack would not take place on that side.
"Will not these men be in your way?" said Monk to Athos.
"On the contrary, monsieur, they will assist in rolling out the barrels, if your honor will permit them.""You are right."
The post, though fast asleep, roused up at the first steps of the three visitors amongst the briars and grass that invaded the porch.Monk gave the password, and penetrated into the interior of the convent, preceded by the light.He walked last, watching the least movement of Athos, his naked dirk in his sleeve, and ready to plunge it into the back of the gentleman at the first suspicious gesture he should see him make.But Athos, with a firm and sure step, crossed the chambers and courts.
Not a door, not a window was left in this building.The doors had been burnt, some on the spot, and the charcoal of them was still jagged with the action of the fire, which had gone out of itself, powerless, no doubt, to get to the heart of those massive joints of oak fastened together with iron nails.As to the windows, all the panes having been broken, night birds, alarmed by the torch, flew away through their holes.At the same time, gigantic bats began to trace their vast, silent circles around the intruders, whilst the light of the torch made their shadows tremble on the high stone walls.Monk concluded there could be no man in the convent, since wild beasts and birds were there still, and fled away at his approach.
After having passed the rubbish, and torn away more than one branch of ivy that had made itself a guardian of the solitude, Athos arrived at the vaults situated beneath the great hall, but the entrance of which was from the chapel.
There he stopped."Here we are, general," said he.
"This, then, is the slab?"
"Yes."
"Ay, and here is the ring -- but the ring is sealed into the stone.""We must have a lever."
"That's a thing very easy to find."
Whilst looking round them, Athos and Monk perceived a little ash of about three inches in diameter, which had shot up in an angle of the wall, reaching a window, concealed by its branches.
"Have you a knife?" said Monk to the fisherman.
"Yes, monsieur."
"Cut down this tree; then."
The fisherman obeyed, but not without notching his cutlass.
When the ash was cut and fashioned into the shape of a lever, the three men penetrated into the vault.
"Stop where you are," said Monk to the fisherman."We are going to dig up some powder; your light may be dangerous."The man drew back in a sort of terror, and faithfully kept to the post assigned him, whilst Monk and Athos turned behind a column at the foot of which, penetrating through a crack, was a moonbeam, reflected exactly on the stone which the Comte de la Fere had come so far in search.
"This is it," said Athos, pointing out to the general the Latin inscription.
"Yes," said Monk.