“ ‘When I found myself in the garden, in the open air, I confess that I breathed as if a heavy load had been lifted from my breast. I followed my guide at a respectful distance, watching his least movement with keen attention. Having reached the little door, he took my hand and pressed a seal to my lips, set in a ring which I had seen him wearing on a finger of his left hand, and I gave him to understand that this significant sign would be obeyed. In the street two horses were waiting; we each mounted one. My Spaniard took my bridle, held his own between his teeth, for his right hand held the bloodstained bundle, and we went off at lightning speed.
“ ‘I could not see the smallest object by which to retrace the road we came by. At dawn I found myself close by my own door, and the Spaniard fled towards the Atocha gate.’
“ ‘And you saw nothing which could lead you to suspect who the woman was whom you had attended?’ the Colonel asked of the surgeon.
“ ‘One thing only,’ he replied. ‘When I turned the unknown lady over, I happened to remark a mole on her arm, about halfway down, as big as a lentil, and surrounded with brown hairs.’—At this instant the rash speaker turned pale. All our eyes, that had been fixed on his, followed his glance, and we saw a Spaniard, whose glittering eyes shone through a clump of orange-trees. On finding himself the object of our attention, the man vanished with the swiftness of a sylph. A young captain rushed in pursuit.
“ ‘By Heaven!’ cried the surgeon, ‘that basilisk stare has chilled me through, my friends. I can hear bells ringing in my ears! I may take leave of you; you will bury me here!’
“ ‘What a fool you are!’ exclaimed Colonel Hulot. ‘Falcon is on the track of the Spaniard who was listening, and he will call him to account.’
“ ‘Well,’ cried one and another, seeing the captain return quite out of breath.
“ ‘The devil’s in it,’ said Falcon; ‘the man went through a wall, I believe! As I do not suppose that he is a wizard, I fancy he must belong to the house! He knows every corner and turning, and easily escaped.’
“ ‘I am done for,’ said the surgeon, in a gloomy voice.
“ ‘Come, come, keep calm, Béga,’ said I (his name was Béga), ‘we will sit on watch with you till you leave. We will not leave you this evening.’
“In point of fact, three young officers who had been losing at play went home with the surgeon to his lodgings, and one of us offered to stay with him.
“Within two days Béga had obtained his recall to France; he made arrangements to travel with a lady to whom Murat had given a strong escort, and had just finished dinner with a party of friends, when his servant came to say that a young lady wished to speak to him. The surgeon and the three officers went down suspecting mischief. The stranger could only say, ‘Be on your guard—’ when she dropped down dead. It was the waiting-woman, who, finding she had been poisoned, had hoped to arrive in time to warn her lover.
“ ‘Devil take it!’ cried Captain Falcon, ‘that is what I call love! No woman on earth but a Spaniard can run about with a dose of poison in her inside!’
“Béga remained strangely pensive. To drown the dark presentiments that haunted him, he sat down to table again, and with his companions drank immoderately. The whole party went early to bed, half drunk.
“In the middle of the night the hapless Béga was aroused by the sharp rattle of the curtain rings pulled violently along the rods. He sat up in bed, in the mechanical trepidation which we all feel on waking with such a start. He saw standing before him a Spaniard wrapped in a cloak, who fixed on him the same burning gaze that he had seen through the bushes.
“Béga shouted out, ‘Help, help, come at once, friends!’ But the Spaniard answered his cry of distress with a bitter laugh.—‘Opium grows for all!’ said he.
“Having thus pronounced sentence as it were, the stranger pointed to the three other men sleeping soundly, took from under his cloak the arm of a woman, freshly amputated, and held it out to Béga, pointing to a mole like that he had so rashly described. ‘Is it the same?’ he asked. By the light of the lantern the man had set on the bed, Béga recognized the arm, and his speechless amazement was answer enough.
“Without waiting for further information, the lady’s husband stabbed him to the heart.”
“You must tell that to the marines!” said Lousteau. “It needs their robust faith to swallow it! Can you tell me which told the tale, the dead man or the Spaniard?”
“Monsieur,” replied the Receiver-General, “I nursed poor Béga, who died five days after in dreadful suffering.—That is not the end.
“At the time of the expedition sent out to restore Ferdinand VII I was appointed to a place in Spain; but, happily for me, I got no further than Tours when I was promised the post of Receiver here at Sancerre. On the eve of setting out I was at a ball at Madame de Listomère’s, where we were to meet several Spaniards of high rank. On rising from the card-table, I saw a Spanish grandee, an afrancesado in exile, who had been about a fortnight in Touraine.
