Page:Gaston Leroux--The bride of the sun.djvu/316

302 pointed out to them. They were always very much amused when they heard that the King, working daily in a bank, earned just one hundred and fifty soles a month.

One day, when some charitable souls were chaffing the King's widow about the mediocre state in which she lived, the Coya, as she was derisively called, retorted that had she and her husband so wished, they could have been the wealthiest couple on earth. But the treasures of the Incas, she added, belonged to the gods and the dead, and none might touch them.

Asked if she had ever seen those treasures, the Coya asserted that her husband had shown them to her once, and she told fabulous stories of the riches hidden in the Temple of Death. Naturally, nobody believed her.