A long silence followed upon these words.  The two enemies, at three paces distance, looked into each other’s eyes:  Don Luis still as cool as ever, the cripple a prey to the maddest anguish.  The monster understood.  Obscure as the truth was, it shone forth before him with all the light of a blinding certainty:  Florence also was alive!  Humanly and physically speaking, the thing was not possible; but the resurrection of Don Luis was likewise an impossibility; and yet Don Luis was alive, with not a scratch on his face, with not a speck of dust on his clothes.

The monster felt himself lost.  The man who held him in the hollow of his implacable hand was one of those men whose power knows no bounds.  He was one of those men who escape from the jaws of death and who triumphantly snatch from death those of whom they have taken charge.

The monster retreated, dragging himself slowly backward on his knees along the little brick path.

He retreated.  He passed by the confused heap of stones that covered the place where the grotto had been, and did not turn his eyes in that direction, as if he were definitely convinced that Florence had come forth safe and sound from the appalling sepulchre.

He retreated.  Don Luis, who no longer had his eyes fixed on him, was busy unwinding a coil of rope which he had picked up, and seemed to pay no further attention to him.

He retreated.

And suddenly, after a glance at his enemy, he spun round, drew himself up on his slack legs with an effort, and started running toward the well.

He was twenty paces from it.  He covered one half, three quarters of the distance.  Already the mouth opened before him.  He put out his arms, with the movement of a man about to dive, and shot forward.

His rush was stopped.  He rolled over on the ground, dragged back violently, with his arms fixed so firmly to his body that he was unable to stir.

It was Don Luis, who had never wholly lost sight of him, who had made a slip-knot to his rope and who had lassoed the cripple at the moment when he was going to fling himself down the abyss.  The cripple struggled for a few moments.  But the slip-knot bit into his flesh.  He ceased moving.  Everything was over.

Then Don Luis Perenna, holding the other end of the lasso, came up to him and bound him hand and foot with what remained of the rope.  The operation was carefully performed.  Don Luis repeated it time after time, using the coils of rope which the cripple had brought to the well and gagging him with a handkerchief.  And, while applying himself to his work, he explained, with affected politeness: 

“You see, sir, people always come to grief through excessive self-confidence.  They never imagine that their adversaries can have resources which they themselves do not possess.  For instance, when you got me to fall into your trap, how could you have supposed, my dear sir, that a man like myself, a man like Arsene Lupin, hanging on the brim of a well, with his arms resting on the brim and his feet against the inner wall, would allow himself to drop down it like the first silly fool that comes along?