if they did know them one day would forget them
the next--I tell you, Morgan, it's stupid!"

"My dear fellow," said Morgan, "what we call stupid, what ordinary
minds never do understand in such a case, has many a chance to become
sublime."

"Well, well," said Valensolle, "I see that you will lose more than I do
in this business; I put devotion into it, but you put enthusiasm."

Morgan sighed.

"Here we are," said he, letting the conversation drop, like a burden too
heavy to be carried longer. In fact, his foot had just struck against
the first step of a stairway.

Preceding Valensolle, for whom he lighted the way, Morgan went up ten
steps and reached the gate. Taking a key from his pocket, he opened it.
They found themselves in the burial vault. On each side of the vault
stood coffins on iron tripods: ducal crowns and escutcheons, blazoned
azure, with the cross argent, indicated that these coffins belonged to
the family of Savoy before it came to bear the royal crown. A flight of
stairs at the further end of the cavern led to an upper floor.

Valensolle cast a curious glance around him, and by the vacillating
light of the torch, he recognized the funereal place he was in.

"The devil!" said he, "we are just the reverse of the Spartans, it
seems."

"Inasmuch as they were Republicans and we are royalists?" asked Morgan.

"No; because they had skeletons at the end of their suppers, and we have
ours at the beginning."

"Are you sure it was the Spartans who proved their philosophy in that
way?" asked Morgan, closing the door.

"They or others--what matter?" said Vallensolle. "Faith! My citation is
made, and like the Abbe Vertot, who wouldn't rewrite his siege, I'll not
change it."

"Well, another time you had better say the Egyptians."

"Well," said Valensolle, with an indifference that was not without
a certain sadness, "I'll probably be a skeleton myself before I have
another chance to display my erudition. But what the devil are you
doing? Why did you put out the torch? You're not going to make me eat
and sleep here I hope?"

Morgan had in fact extinguished the torch at the foot of the steps
leading to the upper floor.

"Give me your hand," said the young man.

Valensolle seized his friend's band with an eagerness that showed how
very slight a desire he had to make a longer stay in the gloomy vaults
of the dukes of Savoy, no matter what honor there might be in such
illustrious companionship.

Morgan