“‘By Heaven!’ cried the surgeon, ’that basilisk stare has chilled me through, my friends.  I can hear bells ringing in my ears!  I may take leave of you; you will bury me here!’

“‘What a fool you are!’ exclaimed Colonel Hulot.  ’Falcon is on the track of the Spaniard who was listening, and he will call him to account.’

“‘Well,’ cried one and another, seeing the captain return quite out of breath.

“‘The devil’s in it,’ said Falcon; ’the man went through a wall, I believe!  As I do not suppose that he is a wizard, I fancy he must belong to the house!  He knows every corner and turning, and easily escaped.’

“‘I am done for,’ said the surgeon, in a gloomy voice.

“‘Come, come, keep calm, Bega,’ said I (his name was Bega), ’we will sit on watch with you till you leave.  We will not leave you this evening.’

“In point of fact, three young officers who had been losing at play went home with the surgeon to his lodgings, and one of us offered to stay with him.

“Within two days Bega had obtained his recall to France; he made arrangements to travel with a lady to whom Murat had given a strong escort, and had just finished dinner with a party of friends, when his servant came to say that a young lady wished to speak to him.  The surgeon and the three officers went down suspecting mischief.  The stranger could only say, ‘Be on your guard—­’ when she dropped down dead.  It was the waiting-woman, who, finding she had been poisoned, had hoped to arrive in time to warn her lover.

“‘Devil take it!’ cried Captain Falcon, ’that is what I call love!  No woman on earth but a Spaniard can run about with a dose of poison in her inside!’

“Bega remained strangely pensive.  To drown the dark presentiments that haunted him, he sat down to table again, and with his companions drank immoderately.  The whole party went early to bed, half drunk.

“In the middle of the night the hapless Bega was aroused by the sharp rattle of the curtain rings pulled violently along the rods.  He sat up in bed, in the mechanical trepidation which we all feel on waking with such a start.  He saw standing before him a Spaniard wrapped in a cloak, who fixed on him the same burning gaze that he had seen through the bushes.

“Bega shouted out, ‘Help, help, come at once, friends!’ But the Spaniard answered his cry of distress with a bitter laugh.—­’Opium grows for all!’ said he.

“Having thus pronounced sentence as it were, the stranger pointed to the three other men sleeping soundly, took from under his cloak the arm of a woman, freshly amputated, and held it out to Bega, pointing to a mole like that he had so rashly described.  ‘Is it the same?’ he asked.  By the light of the lantern the man had set on the bed, Bega recognized the arm, and his speechless amazement was answer enough.

“Without waiting for further information, the lady’s husband stabbed him to the heart.”