“Look here:  you were fifteen or twenty yards away; and do you think that I had not the strength to leap out nor the courage to face the bullets of your revolver, when it was a question of saving Florence Levasseur’s life and my own?  Why, my poor sir, the tiniest effort would have been enough, believe me!

“My reason for not making the effort was that I had something better to do, something infinitely better.  I will tell you why, that is, if you care to know.  Do you?

“Well, then, at the very first moment, my knees and feet, propped against the inner wall, had smashed in a thick layer of plaster which closed up an old excavation in the well; and this I at once perceived.  It was a stroke of luck, wasn’t it?  And it changed the whole situation.  My plan was settled at once.  While I went on acting my little part of the gentleman about to tumble down an abyss, putting on the most scared face, the most staring eyes, the most hideous grin, I enlarged that excavation, taking care to throw the chunks of plaster in front of me in such a way that their fall made no noise.  When the moment came, at the very second when my swooning features vanished before your eyes, I simply jumped into my retreat, thanks to a rather plucky little wriggle of the loins.

“I was saved, because the retreat was dug out on the side where you were moving and because, being dark itself, it east no light.  All that I now had to do was to wait.

“I listened quietly to your threatening speeches.  I let the things you flung down the well go past me.  And, when I thought you had gone back to Florence, I was preparing to leave my refuge, to return to the light of day, and to fall upon you from behind, when—­”

Don Luis turned the cripple over, as though he were a parcel which he was tying up with string, and continued: 

“Have you ever been to Tancarville, the old feudal castle in Normandy, on the banks of the Seine?  Haven’t you?  Well, you must know that, outside the ruins of the keep, there is an old well which, like many other wells of the period, possesses the peculiarity of having two openings, one at the top, facing the sky, and the other a little lower down, hollowed out sideways in the wall and leading to one of the rooms of the keep.

“At Tancarville this second opening is nowadays closed with a grating.  Here it was walled up with a layer of small stones and plaster.  And it was just the recollection of Tancarville that made me stay, all the more as there was no hurry, since you had had the kindness to inform me that Florence would not join me in the next world until four o’clock.  I therefore inspected my refuge and soon realized that, as I had already felt by intuition, it was the foundation of a building which was now demolished and which had the garden laid out on its ruins.

“Well, I went on, groping my way and following the direction which, above ground, would have taken me to the grotto.  My presentiments were not deceived.  A gleam of daylight made its way at the top of a staircase of which I had struck the bottom step.  I went up it and heard the sound of your voice.”