Is it not ?' Manon was a wrinkled old woman with a red and yellow handkerchief twisted round her head.

She took Henri, who was already sleepy with the excitement of his Christmas-tree and his visitors, and when the lady had put on a stiff black cape and a wonderful black silk bonnet and a pair of black wooden clogs over her black cashmere house-boots, the whole party went down the road to a little white house--very like the one they had left--where an old priest, with a good face, welcomed them with a politeness so great that it hid his astonishment.
The lady, with her French waving hands and her shrugging French shoulders and her trembling French speech, told the story.

And now the priest, who knew no English, shrugged HIS shoulders and waved HIS hands and spoke also in French.
'He thinks,' whispered the Phoenix, 'that her troubles have turned her brain.

What a pity you know no French!' 'I do know a lot of French,' whispered Robert, indignantly; 'but it's all about the pencil of the gardener's son and the penknife of the baker's niece--nothing that anyone ever wants to say.' 'If _I_ speak,' the bird whispered, 'he'll think HE'S mad, too.' 'Tell me what to say.' 'Say "C'est vrai, monsieur.

Venez donc voir,"' said the Phoenix; and then Robert earned the undying respect of everybody by suddenly saying, very loudly and distinctly-- 'Say vray, mossoo; venny dong vwaw.' The priest was disappointed when he found that Robert's French began and ended with these useful words; but, at any rate, he saw that if the lady was mad she was not the only one, and he put on a big beavery hat, and got a candle and matches and a spade, and they all went up the hill to the wayside shrine of St John of Luz.
'Now,' said Robert, 'I will go first and show you where it is.' So they prised the stone up with a corner of the spade, and Robert did go first, and they all followed and found the golden treasure exactly as they had left it.