“Yes, but to-morrow? Look you, I’ll bet that you have come to Ille to see the idol! I guessed that when I saw you drawing pictures of the saints at Serrabona.” “The idol! what idol?” The word had aroused my curiosity. “What! didn’t any one at Perpignan tell you how Monsieur de Peyrehorade had found an idol in the ground?” “You mean a terra-cotta, or clay statue, don’t you?” “No, indeed! I mean a copper one, and it’s big enough to make a lot of big sous. It weighs as much as a church bell. It was way down in the ground, at the foot of an olive tree, that we found it.” “So you were present at the discovery, were you?” “Yes, monsieur. Monsieur de Peyrehorade told us a fortnight ago, Jean Coll and me, to dig up an old olive tree that got frozen last year--for it was a very hard winter, you know. So, while we were at work, Jean Coll, who was going at it with all his might, dug his pick into the dirt, and I heard a _bimm_--just as if he’d struck a bell.--‘What’s that?’ says I. We kept on digging and digging, and first a black hand showed; it looked like a dead man’s hand sticking out of the ground. For my part, I was scared. I goes to monsieur, and I says to him: ‘Dead men under the olive tree, master. You’d better call the curé.’ “‘What dead men?’ he says. “He went with me, and he’d no sooner seen the hand than he sings out: ‘An antique! an antique!’ You’d have thought he had found a treasure. And to work he went with the pick and with his hands, and did as much as both of us together, you might say.” “Well, what did you find?” “A tall black woman more than half naked, saving your presence, monsieur, of solid copper; and Monsieur de Peyrehorade told us that it was an idol of heathen times--of the time of Charlemagne!” “I see what it is: a bronze Blessed Virgin from some dismantled convent.” “A Blessed Virgin! oh, yes! I should have recognised it if it had been a Blessed Virgin. It’s an idol, I tell you; you can see that from its expression. It fastens its great white eyes on you; you’d think it was trying to stare you out of countenance. Why, you actually lower your eyes when you look at it.” “White eyes? They are incrusted on the bronze, no doubt. It may be some Roman statue.” “Roman! that’s it. Monsieur de Peyrehorade says she’s a Roman.--Ah! I see that you’re a scholar like him.” “Is it whole, well preserved?” “Oh! it’s all there, monsieur. It’s even handsomer and finished better than the plaster-of-Paris bust of Louis Philippe at the mayor’s office. But for all that, I can’t get over the idol’s face. It has a wicked look--and she is wicked, too.” “Wicked! what harm has she done you?”