as familiar, and
recognized the passage leading to the boudoir. When he opened the door
he experienced the involuntary shudder which the sight of bloodshed
gives to the most determined of men. The spectacle which was offered to
his view was, moreover, in more than one respect astonishing to him.
The Marquise was a woman; she had calculated her vengeance with that
perfection of perfidy which distinguishes the weaker animals. She had
dissimulated her anger in order to assure herself of the crime before
she punished it.

"Too late, my beloved!" said Paquita, in her death agony, casting her
pale eyes upon De Marsay.

The girl of the golden eyes expired in a bath of blood. The great
illumination of candles, a delicate perfume which was perceptible,
a certain disorder, in which the eye of a man accustomed to amorous
adventures could not but discern the madness which is common to all
the passions, revealed how cunningly the Marquise had interrogated the
guilty one. The white room, where the blood showed so well, betrayed a
long struggle. The prints of Paquita's hands were on the cushions. Here
she had clung to her life, here she had defended herself, here she
had been struck. Long strips of the tapestry had been torn down by her
bleeding hands, which, without a doubt, had struggled long. Paquita must
have tried to reach the window; her bare feet had left their imprints
on the edge of the divan, along which she must have run. Her body,
mutilated by the dagger-thrusts of her executioner, told of the fury
with which she had disputed a life which Henri had made precious to her.
She lay stretched on the floor, and in her death-throes had bitten the
ankles of Madame de San-Real, who still held in her hand her dagger,
dripping blood. The hair of the Marquise had been torn out, she was
covered with bites, many of which were bleeding, and her torn dress
revealed her in a state of semi-nudity, with the scratches on her
breasts. She was sublime so. Her head, eager and maddened, exhaled the
odor of blood. Her panting mouth was open, and her nostrils were not
sufficient for her breath. There are certain animals who fall upon their
enemy in their rage, do it to death, and seem in the tranquillity of
victory to have forgotten it. There are others who prowl around their
victim, who guard it in fear lest it should be taken away from them, and
who, like the Achilles of Homer, drag their enemy by the feet nine times
round the walls of Troy. Th