He would glide under the window and call.  Then, hearing him and frightened at so much audacity, she would descend.

He advanced a few steps toward the pavilion; but, all at once, in the part of the garden which seemed lightest, upon the broad gravel walk, he perceived odd, creeping shadows, which the moon, emerging from a cloud, showed to be dogs, enormous dogs, with their ears erect, which, with abound and a low, deep growl, made a dash toward him with outspread limbs—­a dash terrible as the leap of a tiger.

A quick thought illumined Michel’s brain like a flash of electricity:  “Ah! this is Marsa’s answer!” He had just time to mutter, with raging irony: 

“I was right, she was waiting for me!”

Then, before the onslaught of the dogs, he recoiled, clasping his hands upon his breast and boldly thrusting out his elbows to ward off their ferocious attacks.  With a sudden tightening of the muscles he repulsed the Danish hounds, which rolled over writhing on the ground, and then, with formidable baying, returned more furiously still to the charge.

Michel Menko had no weapon.

With a knife he could have defended himself, and slit the bellies of the maddened animals; but he had nothing!  Was he to be forced, then, to fly, pursued like a fox or a deer?

Suppose the servants, roused by the noise of the dogs, should come in their turn, and seize him as a thief?  At all events, that would be comparative safety; at least, they would rescue him from these monsters.  But no:  nothing stirred in the silent, impassive house.

The hounds, erect upon their hind legs, rushed again at Michel, who, overturning them with blows from his feet, and striking them violently in the jaws, now staggered back, Ortog having leaped at his throat.  By a rapid movement of recoil, the young man managed to avoid being strangled; but the terrible teeth of the dog, tearing his coat and shirt into shreds, buried themselves deep in the flesh of his shoulder.

The steel-like muscles and sinewy strength of the Hungarian now stood him in good stead.  He must either free himself, or perish there in the hideous carnage of a quarry.  He seized with both hands, in a viselike grip, Ortog’s enormous neck, and, at the same time, with a desperate jerk, shook free his shoulder, leaving strips of his flesh between the jaws of the animal, whose hot, reeking breath struck him full in the face.  With wild, staring eyes, and summoning up, in an instinct of despair, all his strength and courage, he buried his fingers in Ortog’s neck, and drove his nails through the skin of the colossus, which struck and beat with his paws against the young man’s breast.  The dog’s tongue hung out of his mouth, under the suffocating pressure of the hands of the human being struggling for his life.  As he fought thus against Ortog, the Hungarian gradually retreated, the two hounds leaping about him, now driven off by kicks (Duna’s jaw was broken), and now, with roars of rage and fiery eyes, again attacking their human prey.