ess ...
unless Citizen Broquet, who no doubt smelt a rat, succeeded in ferreting
them out. But this is an unlikely supposition, for Citizen Broquet died
in extreme poverty."

"So then ...?"

"So then everybody began to hunt. The children of Pauline, the sister,
hastened from Geneva. It was discovered that Charles had been secretly
married and that he had sons. All these heirs set to work."

"But Charles himself?"

"Charles lived in the most absolute retirement. He did not leave his
room."

"Never?"

"Well, that is the most extraordinary, the most astounding part of the
story. Once a year, Charles d'Ernemont, impelled by a sort of
subconscious will-power, came downstairs, took the exact road which his
father had taken, walked across the garden and sat down either on the
steps of the rotunda, which you see here, in the picture, or on the curb
of the well. At twenty-seven minutes past five, he rose and went indoors
again; and until his death, which occurred in 1820, he never once failed
to perform this incomprehensible pilgrimage. Well, the day on which this
happened was invariably the 15th of April, the anniversary of the
arrest."

Maitre Valandier was no longer smiling and himself seemed impressed by
the amazing story which he was telling us.

"And, since Charles's death?" asked Lupin, after a moment's reflection.

"Since that time," replied the lawyer, with a certain solemnity of
manner, "for nearly a hundred years, the heirs of Charles and Pauline
d'Ernemont have kept up the pilgrimage of the 15th of April. During the
first few years they made the most thorough excavations. Every inch of
the garden was searched, every clod of ground dug up. All this is now
over. They take hardly any pains. All they do is, from time to time, for
no particular reason, to turn over a stone or explore the well. For the
most part, they are content to sit down on the steps of the rotunda,
like the poor madman; and, like him, they wait. And that, you see, is
the sad part of their destiny. In those hundred years, all these people
who have succeeded one another, from father to son, have lost--what
shall I say?--the energy of life. They have no courage left, no
initiative. They wait. They wait for the 15th of April; and, when the
15th of April comes, they wait for a miracle to take place. Poverty has
ended by overtaking every one of them. My predecessors and I have sold
first the house, in order to build another which yields a better