It did not take long.  The shoulders had gone down; the chin; and then the mouth convulsed with the death-grin; and then the eyes, drunk with terror; and then the forehead and the hair:  the whole head, in short, had disappeared.

The cripple sat gazing wildly, as though in ecstasy, motionless, with an expression of fierce delight, and without a word that could trouble the silence and interrupt his hatred.

At the edge of the abyss nothing remained but the hands, the obstinate, stubborn, desperate, heroic hands, the poor, helpless hands which alone still lived, and which, gradually, retreating toward death, yielded and fell back and let go.

The hands had slipped.  For a moment the fingers held on like claws.  So natural was the effort which they made that it looked as if they did not even yet despair, unaided, of resuscitating and bringing back to the light of day the corpse already entombed in the darkness.  And then they in their turn gave way.  And then—­and then, suddenly, there was nothing more to be seen and nothing more to be heard.

The cripple started to his feet, as though released by a spring, and yelled with delight: 

“Oof!  That’s done it!  Lupin in the bottomless pit!  One more adventure finished!  Oof!”

Turning in Florence’s direction, he once more danced his dance of death.  He raised himself to his full height and then suddenly crouched down again, throwing about his legs like the grotesque, ragged limbs of a scarecrow.  And he sang and whistled and belched forth insults and hideous blasphemies.

Then he came back to the yawning mouth of the well and, standing some way off, as if still afraid to come nearer, he spat into it three times.

Nor was this enough for his hatred.  There were some broken pieces of statuary on the ground.  He took a carved head, rolled it along the grass, and sent it crashing down the well.  A little farther away was a stack of old, rusty cannon balls.  These also he rolled to the edge and pushed in.  Five, ten, fifteen cannon balls went scooting down, one after the other, banging against the walls with a loud and sinister noise which the echo swelled into the angry roar of distant thunder.

“There, take that, Lupin!  I’m sick of you, you dirty cad!  That’s for the spokes you put in my wheel, over that damned inheritance! ...  Here, take this, too!...  And this!...  And this!...  Here’s a chocolate for you in case you’re hungry....  Do you want another?  Here you are, old chap! catch!”

He staggered, seized with a sort of giddiness, and had to squat on his haunches.  He was utterly spent.  However, obeying a last convulsion, he still found the strength to kneel down by the well, and leaning over the darkness, he stammered, breathlessly: 

“Hi!  I say!  Corpse!  Don’t go knocking at the gate of hell at once!...  The little girl’s joining you in twenty minutes....  Yes, that’s it, at four o’clock....  You know I’m a punctual man and keep my appointments to the minute....  She’ll be with you at four o’clock exactly.