Once more, while we
stared in stupefaction, they flashed out and in; and this time it
seemed to me that as they vanished the black spectre seized its
victim.
When I say that all this time the two figures uttered no sound,
that there was no other living being in sight, and that on every
side of the solitary house the moor, growing each minute more
eerie as the day waned, spread to the horizon, the more
superstitious among us may be pardoned if they gave way to their
fears. La Font was the first to speak.
"MON DIEU!" he cried--while the girl moaned in terror, the
Breton crossed himself, and La Trape looked uncomfortable--"the
place is bewitched!"
"Nonsense!" I said. "Who is in the house, girl?"
"Only my mother," she wailed. "Oh, my poor mother!"
I silenced her, scolding them all for fools, and her first; and
La Font, recovering himself, did the same. But this was the year
of that strange appearance of the spectre horseman at
Fontainebleau of which so much has been said; and my servants,
when we had approached the house a little nearer, and it still
remained silent and, as it were, dead to the eye, would go no
farther, but stood in sheer terror and permitted me to go on
alone with La Font.
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