A search for the production and non-standard decay of a Higgs boson, h, into four taus through intermediate pseudoscalars, a, is conducted on 683 pb−1 of data collected
by the ALEPH experiment at centre-of-mass energies from 183 to 209 GeV. No excess of events above background is observed, and exclusion limits are placed on the combined
production cross section times branching ratio, ξ2 = sigma(e+e−→Zh) sigmaSM(e+e−→Zh) × B(h --> aa) × B(a -->
τ+τ−)2. For mh < 107 GeV/c2 and 4 < ma < 10 GeV/c2, ξ2 > 1 is excluded at the 95% confidence level.
