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1It would have been of as much avail to interrogate any stone face outside the chateau as to interrogate that face of
2his. The nephew looked at him, in vain, in passing on to the door. "Good night!" said the uncle. "I look to the pleasure
3of seeing you again in the morning. Good repose! Light Monsieur my nephew to his chamber there!--And burn Monsieur my
4nephew in his bed, if you will," he added to himself, before he rang his little bell again, and summoned his valet to
5his own bedroom. The valet come and gone, Monsieur the Marquis walked to and fro in his loose chamber-robe, to prepare
6himself gently for sleep, that hot still night. Rustling about the room, his softly-slippered feet making no noise on
7the floor, he moved like a refined tiger:--looked like some enchanted marquis of the impenitently wicked sort, in story,
8whose periodical change into tiger form was either just going off, or just coming on. He moved from end to end of his
9voluptuous bedroom, looking again at the scraps of the day's journey that came unbidden into his mind; the slow toil up
10the hill at sunset, the setting sun, the descent, the mill, the prison on the crag, the little village in the hollow,
11the peasants at the fountain, and the mender of roads with his blue cap pointing out the chain under the carriage. That
12fountain suggested the Paris fountain, the little bundle lying on the step, the women bending over it, and the tall man
13with his arms up, crying, "Dead!" "I am cool now," said Monsieur the Marquis, "and may go to bed." So, leaving only one
14light burning on the large hearth, he let his thin gauze curtains fall around him, and heard the night break its silence
15with a long sigh as he composed himself to sleep. The stone faces on the outer walls stared blindly at the black night
16for three heavy hours; for three heavy hours, the horses in the stables rattled at their racks, the dogs barked, and the
17owl made a noise with very little resemblance in it to the noise conventionally assigned to the owl by men-poets. But it
18is the obstinate custom of such creatures hardly ever to say what is set down for them. For three heavy hours, the stone
19faces of the chateau, lion and human, stared blindly at the night. Dead darkness lay on all the landscape, dead darkness
20added its own hush to the hushing dust on all the roads. The burial-place had got to the pass that its little heaps of
21poor grass were undistinguishable from one another; the figure on the Cross might have come down, for anything that
22could be seen of it. In the village, taxers and taxed were fast asleep. Dreaming, perhaps, of banquets, as the starved
23usually do, and of ease and rest, as the driven slave and the yoked ox may, its lean inhabitants slept soundly, and were
24fed and freed. The fountain in the village flowed unseen and unheard, and the fountain at the chateau dropped unseen and
25unheard--both melting away, like the minutes that were falling from the spring of Time--through three dark hours. Then,
26the grey water of both began to be ghostly in the light, and the eyes of the stone faces of the chateau were opened.
27Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops of the still trees, and poured its radiance over the hill.
28In the glow, the water of the chateau fountain seemed to turn to blood, and the stone faces crimsoned. The carol of the
29birds was loud and high, and, on the weather-beaten sill of the great window of the bed-chamber of Monsieur the Marquis,
30one little bird sang its sweetest song with all its might. At this, the nearest stone face seemed to stare amazed, and,
31with open mouth and dropped under-jaw, looked awe-stricken. Now, the sun was full up, and movement began in the village.
32Casement windows opened, crazy doors were unbarred, and people came forth shivering--chilled, as yet, by the new sweet
33air. Then began the rarely lightened toil of the day among the village population. Some, to the fountain; some, to the
34fields; men and women here, to dig and delve; men and women there, to see to the poor live stock, and lead the bony cows
35out, to such pasture as could be found by the roadside. In the church and at the Cross, a kneeling figure or two;
36attendant on the latter prayers, the led cow, trying for a breakfast among the weeds at its foot. The chateau awoke
37later, as became its quality, but awoke gradually and surely. First, the lonely boar-spears and knives of the chase had
38been reddened as of old; then, had gleamed trenchant in the morning sunshine; now, doors and windows were thrown open,
39horses in their stables looked round over their shoulders at the light and freshness pouring in at doorways, leaves
40sparkled and rustled at iron-grated windows, dogs pulled hard at their chains, and reared impatient to be loosed. All
41these trivial incidents belonged to the routine of life, and the return of morning. Surely, not so the ringing of the
42great bell of the chateau, nor the running up and down the stairs; nor the hurried figures on the terrace; nor the
43booting and tramping here and there and everywhere, nor the quick saddling of horses and riding away? What winds
44conveyed this hurry to the grizzled mender of roads, already at work on the hill-top beyond the village, with his day's
45dinner (not much to carry) lying in a bundle that it was worth no crow's while to peck at, on a heap of stones? Had the
46birds, carrying some grains of it to a distance, dropped one over him as they sow chance seeds? Whether or no, the
47mender of roads ran, on the sultry morning, as if for his life, down the hill, knee-high in dust, and never stopped till
48he got to the fountain. All the people of the village were at the fountain, standing about in their depressed manner,
49and whispering low, but showing no other emotions than grim curiosity and surprise. The led cows, hastily brought in and
50tethered to anything that would hold them, were looking stupidly on, or lying down chewing the cud of nothing
51particularly repaying their trouble, which they had picked up in their interrupted saunter. Some of the people of the
52chateau, and some of those of the posting-house, and all the taxing authorities, were armed more or less, and were
53crowded on the other side of the little street in a purposeless way, that was highly fraught with nothing. Already, the
54mender of roads had penetrated into the midst of a group of fifty particular friends, and was smiting himself in the
55breast with his blue cap. What did all this portend, and what portended the swift hoisting-up of Monsieur Gabelle behind
56a servant on horseback, and the conveying away of the said Gabelle (double-laden though the horse was), at a gallop,
57like a new version of the German ballad of Leonora? It portended that there was one stone face too many, up at the
58chateau. The Gorgon had surveyed the building again in the night, and had added the one stone face wanting; the stone
59face for which it had waited through about two hundred years. It lay back on the pillow of Monsieur the Marquis. It was
60like a fine mask, suddenly startled, made angry, and petrified. Driven home into the heart of the stone figure attached
61to it, was a knife. Round its hilt was a frill of paper, on which was scrawled: "Drive him fast to his tomb. This, from
62Jacques."
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