The royal tent had been erected at the foot of Morne-Vert, a chaotic mountain remarkable for its sea-green color and the glitter of its finely veined marble. Out of curiosity, while his party were preparing for the night, Jouël attempted to climb it, repeatedly striking the uniformly resistant ground with an iron-tipped rod, as though to divine its nature. One particular blow startled him by producing a faint subterranean resonance. Halting, he delivered some heavy knocks at various suspect points in the locality and noticed a muffled echo which spread through the mountainside, indicating the presence of a cavern of considerable size. Feeling that this might provide an agreeable shelter for the night, which promised to be a cold one, Jouël ascended no further, but had his men look for a fissure giving access to the unexpected cave.

Thwarted by the failure of all their investigations, the King con­sidered the possibility of a buried opening and ordered the base of the mountain, which was covered by fine gravel, to be cleared beneath the spot where the echo was.

Several makeshift workmen, equipped with whatever tools came to hand, almost at once laid bare the top of an arch which they cleared so that a man might just pass through.

Jouël entered the narrow corridor torch, in hand and soon discovered a magnificent cavern all of green marble, studded, through some curious geological phenomenon, with huge nuggets of gold. These alone were worth an incalculable fortune, which might well be increased tenfold by those undoubtedly concealed in the mass of the mountain.

Amazed, Jouël decided to set this fabulous wealth aside, out of reach of the greedy, for the eventuality of a period of ruin and misfortune, since at that time it was not needed by a happy realm enjoying the peace and prosperity due to its founder’s genius. Keeping his thoughts to himself, the King summoned his retinue and the night was spent peacefully in the hospitable cavern.

Next day, under Jouël’s direction, laborers set to work and men plied to and fro to the nearest village. When the original narrow passage had been completely rescued from the sand by their efforts, it became a spacious tunnel, in the middle of which, after cleaning the cave, a great two-leaved gate was set, left, at the King’s express command, without a lock. Then, in front of everyone, Jouël, who was skilled in magic, uttered two solemn spells. By the first he made the outside of the mountain for ever invulnerable to the hardest tools — and by the second he bound shut the tall, stout gate, at the same time securing it against being breeched or forced open.

The monarch then made an important declaration to those present. A certain magical sentence describing a superhuman event connected with himself and destined to illustrate his death would have the power of momentarily opening the gate each time it was faultlessly pronounced; but not even he knew yet what it would be, and even had he wished to do so, would have been unable to recover the forbidden riches. Only once in the course of future centuries, at a time of great public disaster, actual or impending eruption of which might call for the contribution of these treasures, would Jouël have the power to reveal the kabbalistic utterance to one of his successors in a dream. He was announcing the content of the open sesame beforehand so the many foolhardy ones, by their periodic attempts, might save the great lode from the oblivion to which an absolute confinement would necessarily have condemned it.

A month later, when he had returned to Gloannic after completing his tour, Jouël died on a clear night, full of years and glory — and suddenly a new star shone in the firmament.

The people were quick to recognize this as the supernatural event predicted by Jouël for the hour of his death and confidently hailed the unforeseen star as the very soul of the deceased, ready to keep eternal watch over the kingdom’s destiny. Knowing thereafter what fact had to be expressed in the formula that would release Morne-Vert’s enormous wealth, the new sovereign, Jouël’s ambitious son, pronounced many a pithy text before the bewitched gate, describing in a thousand different ways the late King’s transformation into a star in the heavens. But he did not manage to utter it correctly, for the leaves remained shut. And afterward, when similar attempts were made, they always proved vain.

Now Kourmelen had in his dream received this stubborn phrase from the lips of Jouël, empowered to reveal it by the political tempest threatening the kingdom. At the threshold of Morne-Vert he uttered the following words, which seekers down centuries had only come close to:

“Jouël burns, heavenly star.”

The gate opened wide — then closed when the visitor had passed through to enter the green cave.

Following Jouël’s command, the reason for which he understood, Kourmelen had come there to hide all the gold of his crown. What place could be found safer than this cave, so long inviolate despite a thousand attempts? And even if, by sheer persistence, a conspirator were to discover the exact open sesame, a guarantee against the dreaded usurpation was provided by the presence in the cave of innumerable ingots from which the recast and transformed Load was quite indistinguishable. Indeed, because of the popular fetishism, only a head encircled by the ancestral crown, indisputably restored from its original gold, could rule. Yet how was the revered ingot to be identified among so many others like it?

Without too much difficulty Kourmelen extracted a long stone half-embedded in the surface of an isolated block of green marble to obtain a perfect cavity into which the precious, heavy object neatly fitted. Once in place it had the same appearance as the numerous specimens of gold embedded all over the cavern’s serpentine.

But if the ingot’s anonymity were to be too complete, Hello herself would have no chance of reigning, since one day she would be obliged to prove its almost divine origin by some undeniable sign before restoring it to the shape of a royal crown for her brow.

Still following Jouël’s instructions, Kourmelen began to sign the flat surface of the green block with his dagger’s point, barely scratching the marble.

The kings of Kerlaguëzo had, from the beginning, affixed the word Ego to important documents, in place of their name: this heightened their prestige by making each of them, during his reign, the supreme I, source and goal of all things. The handwriting and the date redeemed this syllabic uniformity by giving a double indication of the relevant sovereign on each item.

So on this occasion, adopting his usual mark without hesitation, Kourmelen engraved his customary Ego, with the date — then at once covered the whole inscription with a thin layer of sand. By this latter precaution the King made it almost impossible for an uninformed seeker to discover the indication of the signature, should he, by some unheard-of chance, succeed in pronouncing the correct open sesame; moreover, when the King had entered the cave he had sought out the darkest corner in which to do his business. In leaving, Kourmelen used the four mighty vocables to reopen the gate, which quickly closed again behind him.

When he returned from this expedition, he declared publicly (while suppressing all the details) that the Load was now recast and by his efforts lay inside Morne-Vert, whose password Jouël had revealed to him in a dream. To maintain the people’s confidence in the future, it was important for them to know that the sacred gold was buried in a safe place, waiting to consecrate future sovereigns, since the idea of its loss would have reduced them to a dangerous condition of despair.

Kourmelen felt death already upon him and hastened to complete Jouël’s commands. The latter, with much supplementary advice, had bid him have no hesitation in taking the court jester Le Quillec to play the indispensable part of a universal confidant. One-eyed and repulsive, Le Quillec used to exaggerate the grotesqueness of his person, which was the object of general hilarity, by always dressing in pink like the daintiest of coxcombs. Full of spirited repartee, he concealed a good and upright soul beneath his comic mask, and was most sincerely devoted to the King.

Kourmelen was at first amazed by such a choice, but on reflection admired Jouël’s sagacity. As well as being a most trustworthy agent, Le Quillec would be immune from threats or persuasion designed to make him talk, since, insofar as he was a humble and despised person, no one would consider him worthy of having been chosen as the repository of a great secret.

The King revealed to the jester, without keeping anything back, the formula for entering the cave, the location of the celebrated ingot and the existence of the conclusive signature. When the right moment came to act, Hello, as the daughter of a sovereign and divine race, would be forewarned by one of those celestial signs denied to ordinary mortals like Le Quillec and would come of her own accord to the one-eyed man to ask him for his secrets.