ch appeared
at thirty or forty yards' distance.

Beautrelet threw off his knapsack and sat down. He had had a hard and
tiring day. He fell asleep for a little. Then the cool wind that blew
inside the cave woke him up. He sat for a few minutes without moving,
absent-minded, vague-eyed. He tried to reflect, to recapture his still
torpid thoughts. And, as he recovered his consciousness, he was on the
point of rising, when he received the impression that his eyes,
suddenly fixed, suddenly wide-open, saw--

A thrill shook him from head to foot. His hands clutched convulsively
and he felt the beads of perspiration forming at the roots of his hair:

"No, no," he stammered. "It's a dream, an hallucination. Let's look:
it's not possible!"

He plunged down on his knees and stooped over. Two huge letters, each
perhaps a foot long, appeared cut in relief in the granite of the
floor. Those two letters, clumsily, but plainly carved, with their
corners rounded and their surface smoothed by the wear and tear of
centuries, were a D and an F.

D and F! Oh, bewildering miracle! D and F: just two letters of the
document! Oh, Beautrelet had no need to consult it to bring before his
mind that group of letters in the fourth line, the line of the
measurements and indications! He knew them well! They were inscribed
for all time at the back of his pupils, encrusted for good and all in
the very substance of his brain!

He rose to his feet, went down the steep road, climbed back along the
old fort, hung on to the spikes of the rail again, in order to pass,
and walked briskly toward a shepherd whose flock was grazing some way
off on a dip in the tableland:

"That cave, over there--that cave--"

His lips trembled and he tried to find the words that would not come.
The shepherd looked at him in amazement. At last, Isidore repeated:

"Yes, that cave--over there--to the right of the fort. Has it a name?"

"Yes, I should think so. All the Etretat folk like to call it the
Demoiselles."

"What?--What?--What's that you say?"

"Why, of course--it's the Chambre des Demoiselles."

Isidore felt like flying at his throat, as though all the truth lived
in that man and he hoped to get it from him at one swoop, to tear it
from him.

The Demoiselles! One of the words, one of the only three known words of
the document!

A whirlwind of madness shook Beautrelet where he stood. And it rose all
around him, blew upon him like a tempestuous squall that