ol to his face. A sudden smell of chloroform
filled the room.

Clarisse had recognized M. Nicole.

"Come along, Growler!" he cried. "Come along, Masher! Drop your
shooters: I've got him! He's a limp rag... Tie him up."

Daubrecq, in fact, was bending in two and falling on his knees like a
disjointed doll. Under the action of the chloroform, the fearsome brute
sank into impotence, became harmless and grotesque.

The Growler and the Masher rolled him in one of the blankets of the bed
and tied him up securely.

"That's it! That's it!" shouted Lupin, leaping to his feet.

And, in a sudden reaction of mad delight, he began to dance a wild jig
in the middle of the room, a jig mingled with bits of can-can and the
contortions of the cakewalk and the whirls of a dancing dervish and the
acrobatic movements of a clown and the lurching steps of a drunken
man. And he announced, as though they were the numbers in a music-hall
performance:

"The prisoner's dance!... The captive's hornpipe!... A fantasia on the
corpse of a representative of the people!... The chloroform polka!...
The two-step of the conquered goggles! Olle! Olle! The blackmailer's
fandango! Hoot! Hoot! The McDaubrecq's fling!... The turkey trot!...
And the bunny hug!... And the grizzly bear!... The Tyrolean dance:
tra-la-liety!... Allons, enfants de la partie!... Zing, boum, boum!
Zing, boum, boum!..."

All his street-arab nature, all his instincts of gaiety, so long
suppressed by his constant anxiety and disappointment, came out and
betrayed themselves in roars of laughter, bursts of animal spirits and a
picturesque need of childlike exuberance and riot.

He gave a last high kick, turned a series of cartwheels round the
room and ended by standing with his hands on his hips and one foot on
Daubrecq's lifeless body.

"An allegorical tableau!" he announced. "The angel of virtue destroying
the hydra of vice!"

And the humour of the scene was twice as great because Lupin was
appearing under the aspect of M. Nicole, in the clothes and figure of
that wizened, awkward, nervous private tutor.

A sad smile flickered across Mme. Mergy's face, her first smile for
many a long month. But, at once returning to the reality of things, she
besought him:

"Please, please... think of Gilbert!"

He ran up to her, caught her in his arms and, obeying a spontaneous
impulse, so frank that she could but laugh at it, gave her a resounding
kiss on either cheek:

"There, lady