Having heard of a cavern in the garden of the presbytery which, in the memory of living people, was the refuge of a murderer whom the gendarmes were afraid to follow underground, because it was believed that he would knock them on the head one after the other while they were wriggling through the passage, and then quietly walk out by a back way unknown to anyone but himself, I felt a strong desire to explore this cave of evil repute. The idea was all the more enticing because I was assured that nobody had entered it but the murderer. I called upon the curé, and asked him how he felt at the prospect of a little trip underground in his own garden. He did not seem to feel very eager for the adventure; but when I proposed to go alone, he was too polite to let me depart with his best wishes. He decided to accompany me. When he had put on his oldest _soutane_, we started with a packet of candles and a ball of string.
Priests' gardens are often very interesting, and the one through which we now passed pleased me greatly. It was a long strip, in two or three terraces, upon the rocky hillside. Many fruit-trees, but chiefly almond, cherry, and peach, were scattered over it. There was also a straggling vine-trellis, from which there now spread in the June air that sweet fragrance of the freshly-opened flower-buds of which the poet-king Solomon sung. In the highest part was the cavern. We had to crawl in upon our hands and knees, and in some places to lie out almost flat. As my friend the curé insisted upon going first, I could not help thinking that the back view of him, as he wormed his way along the low gallery, was not exactly sacerdotal. Sometimes we passed over smooth sand--evidently left by a stream that once issued here; at other times over small stones, which were bad for the knees. We kept a keen look-out for the remains of prehistoric men and beasts, but only found the shells of eggs which a fox had probably stolen from the curé's fowl-house. There were also rabbits' bones, whose presence there was to be explained in the same way. My companion, however, having once entered his cave, was resolved upon returning another day and digging conscientiously in the sand, which appeared to be very deep in places. He may since have unearthed some pre-historic treasures there. The cavern was interesting as showing the honeycombing effects of water on limestone rock, but it did not lead very far into the hill. The belief that the murderer escaped by another opening than the one by which he entered was founded on fiction.