Lilian nor Mimmy were much pleased with the place. The elder
sister, who had talked over the matter with her school companions,
expected a fine castle with turrets, battlements, and romance; and
the other expected a pretty smiling house, such as princes, in her
mind, ought to inhabit.

Instead of this they found an old turret, with steps so broken that
M. Lacordaire did not care to ascend them, and the ruined walls of a
mansion, in which nothing was to be seen but the remains of an
enormous kitchen chimney.

"It was the kitchen of the family," said the guide.

"Oh," said Mrs. Thompson.

"And this," said the woman, taking them into the next ruined
compartment, "was the kitchen of monsieur et madame."

"What! two kitchens?" exclaimed Lilian, upon which M. Lacordaire
explained that the ancestors of the Prince de Polignac had been very
great people, and had therefore required culinary performances on a
great scale.

And then the woman began to chatter something about an oracle of
Apollo. There was, she said, a hole in the rock, from which in past
times, perhaps more than a hundred years ago, the oracle used to
speak forth mysterious words.

"There," she said, pointing to a part of the rock at some distance,
"was the hole. And if the ladies would follow her to a little