s head and said:

"What a pity!"

The cripple seemed petrified. All his joyous contortions, all his
triumphal pantomime, stopped short. He blurted out:

"Eh? What did you say?"

"I say," declared Don Luis, preserving his calm and courteous demeanour
and refraining from echoing the cripple's familiarity, "I say, my dear
sir, that you have done very wrong. I never met a finer nature nor one
more worthy of esteem than that of Mlle. Levasseur. The incomparable
beauty of her face and figure, her youth, her charm, all these deserved a
better treatment. It would indeed be a matter for regret if such a
masterpiece of womankind had ceased to be."

The cripple remained astounded. Don Luis's serene manner dismayed him. He
said, in a blank voice:

"I tell you, she has ceased to be. Haven't you seen the grotto? Florence
no longer exists!"

"I refuse to believe it," said Don Luis quietly. "If that were so,
everything would look different. The sky would be clouded; the birds
would not be singing; and nature would wear her mourning garb. But the
birds are singing, the sky is blue, everything is as it should be: the
honest man is alive; and the rascal is crawling at his feet. How could
Florence be dead?"

A long silence followed upon these words. The two enemies, at three paces
distance, looked into each other's eyes: Don Luis still as cool as ever,
the cripple a prey to the maddest anguish. The monster understood.
Obscure as the truth was, it shone forth before him with all the light of
a blinding certainty: Florence also was alive! Humanly and physically
speaking, the thing was not possible; but the resurrection of Don Luis
was likewise an impossibility; and yet Don Luis was alive, with not a
scratch on his face, with not a speck of dust on his clothes.

The monster felt himself lost. The man who held him in the hollow of his
implacable hand was one of those men whose power knows no bounds. He was
one of those men who escape from the jaws of death and who triumphantly
snatch from death those of whom they have taken charge.

The monster retreated, dragging himself slowly backward on his knees
along the little brick path.

He retreated. He passed by the confused heap of stones that covered the
place where the grotto had been, and did not turn his eyes in that
direction, as if he were definitely convinced that Florence had come
forth safe and sound from the appalling sepulchre.

He retreated. Don Luis, who no longer had hi