“Who has laid this wicked plot?” asked the poor, frightened, young girl, with a trembling voice, horror-stricken at the danger she had escaped.

“The great lord who has given them all such heaps of money; oh! such quantities of big gold pieces—­by the handful,” said Chiquita, her great dark eyes glittering with a fierce, covetous expression, strange and horrible to see in one so young.  “But all the same, you gave me the pearls, and he shall not hurt you; he shall not have you if you don’t want to go.  I will tell them that you were awake, and there was a man in the room, so that I could not get in and open the door for them; they will all go away quietly enough; you need not be afraid.  Now let me have one good look at you before I go—­oh, how sweet and pretty you are—­and I love you, yes, I do, ever so much; almost as much as Agostino.  But what is this?” cried she suddenly, pouncing upon a knife that was lying on the table near the bed.  “Why, you have got the very knife I lost; it was my father’s knife.  Well, you may keep it—­it’s a good one.”

     ’When this viper bites you, make sure
     That you must die, for there’s no cure.’

“See, this is the way to open it, and then you use it like this:  strike from below upwards—­the blade goes in better that way—­and it’s so sharp it will go through anything.  Carry it in the bosom of your dress, and it is always ready; then if anybody bothers you, out with it, and paf! you have them ripped up in no time,” and the strange, eerie little creature accompanied her words with appropriate gestures, by way of illustration.  This extraordinary lesson in the art of using a knife, given in the dead of night, and under such peculiar circumstances, seemed like a nightmare to Isabelle.

“Be sure you hold the knife like this, do you see? tightly clasped in your fingers—­as long as you have it no one can harm you, but you can hurt them.  Now, I must go—­adieu, and don’t forget Chiquita.”

So saying, the queer little elf pushed a table up to the wall under the bull’s eye, mounted it, sprang up and caught hold of the iron bar with the agility of a monkey, swung herself up in some extraordinary fashion, wriggled through the small opening and disappeared, chanting in a rude measure, “Chiquita whisks through key-holes, and dances on the sharp points of spear-heads and the broken glass on garden walls, without ever hurting herself one bit—­and nobody can catch her.”

Isabelle, left alone, awaited the break of day with trembling impatience, unable to sleep after the fright and agitation she had experienced, and momentarily dreading some fresh cause of alarm; but nothing else happened to disturb her.  When she joined her companions at breakfast, they were all struck with her extreme pallor, and the distressed expression of her countenance.  To their anxious questions she replied by giving an account of her nocturnal adventure, and de Sigognac, furious at this fresh outrage, could scarcely be restrained from going at once to demand, satisfaction for it from the Duke of Vallombreuse, to whom he did not hesitate to attribute this villainous scheme.