Marie Louise had to admit that her mother walked almost as well as she did. "But you can't run!" "Let us try." The young woman gathered up her skirts and tried. Her children, who had never seen her so merry, shouted joyfully and forgot to run with her. This new superiority aroused their enthusiasm. "Certainly," concluded the little girl, "the only thing left for you is the ravine." "Which ravine?" "Papa's." It was a mysterious, wild place, which she had never been able to find herself. Her father had once taken her there, and they had found difficulty in getting out, owing to the interlaced branches and briars and pebbles. She had retained a heroic memory of it with which she used to dazzle her friends on exceptional occasions. Albert's mother, who was informed of these adventures, told of the prowess of her son, who, in his first youth, had loved the mountains for the purity of their air, for their commanding views, and above all, for their dangers. Elizabeth, little by little, learned of her husband's youth--after his childhood, about which she had never been curious. She was obliged, as well, to satisfy her children, who asked for stories of adventure. And there she was again, but now with method and a desire to succeed, at times kneeling on the floor, again mounted on a ladder, to explore the library shelves which stocked an entire room from floor to ceiling, into which she had previously seldom gone. After many searches, she found a volume of stories of Dauphiné, and began to wade through these tales; then, as she grew more familiar with them, she learned to change them, to bring out the dramatic effects, and to modify the endings in an optimistic way, so as not to sadden Marie Louise, who was too fond of the characters in her stories, while Philippe interpreted the catastrophes more philosophically. The devil who built a wall of enclosure round the park at Vizille, and who was captured by Marshall de Lesdiguières; the fairy Mélusine, who lived in the Sassenage caves, whose daughter was a siren and became a woman through love, especially aroused the children's imagination, because they had visited these same places of enchantment the previous year in the Passerat's motor, which was for them quite sufficient to give an air of reality to the legend. "We did not see Mélusine at Sassenage, Mamma," exclaimed Marie Louise. "She is not there now." "Where is she?" "Very far away in the sea." The little girl remained thoughtful, and then said: "They ought to have told me her story while we were in the cave. It is so stupid to walk about a cave without hearing anything about the fairy!"