indicating the cold-bloodedness of
the murderers. Shortly before eight o'clock two drummers came in, but
the face of the host or of the strange gentleman displeased them; they
thought they were in the way and left, whereupon the gate was locked.
But there was a knocking several times after that; the preconcerted
signal was three rapid knocks with the fist, and one after the other
there entered the soldier Colard with his sweetheart, the humpbacked
Missonier, an aristocratic looking veiled lady with green feathers in
her hat, and a tobacco-dealer in a blue coat. The hat with the green
feathers was a special proof of Bach's powers of invention, and stood
out with picturesque verisimilitude against the blue-coated
tobacconist.

At half past eight Madame Bancal went up to the attic to put her
daughter Madeleine to bed, and now Bastide Grammont explained to the
old man that he must die. The imploring supplications of the victim
resulted only in the powerful Bastide seizing him, and, in spite of his
violent resistance, laying him on the table, from which Bancal hastily
removed two loaves of bread which some one had brought along. Fualdes
begged pitifully that he might be given time to reconcile himself with
God, but Bastide Grammont replied gruffly: "Reconcile yourself with the
devil."

Here M. Jausion interrupted the relation, and inquired whether a
hand-organ had not perchance at that moment commenced to play in front
of the house. Bach eagerly confirmed the supposition, and continued his
report, which now wrought up the narrator himself to a pitch of
excitement and horror: Colard and Bancal held the old man's legs, while
the tobacconist and his sweetheart seized his head and arms. A
gentleman with a wooden leg and a three-cornered hat held a candle high
in the air. There was something weird about the emergence of this new
figure; if it stood for nothing more than a finishing touch to the
horror of that night of murder, it fulfilled its aim to perfection. The
wooden-legged man uplifting the candle was like an impious spirit from
the nether world, and it was not necessary to dwell upon the narrow
chin, the sneering mouth, the spectral eye.

With a broad knife Bastide Grammont gave the old man a stab; Fualdes,
by a superhuman effort, succeeded in breaking loose; he sprang up and
ran, already mortally wounded, through the room; Bastide Grammont,
pursuing, seized hold of him, threw him again on the table, the table
rocked,