He turned at once to a basket which he had brought with him, and in which they supposed that he kept some juggling apparatus or some strange beast, and took from it a little girl of eight or ten years, who seemed to be no more than four or five, she was so small and slender; and, with all the rest, dark-skinned, with a tangled mass of hair; a veritable imp, dressed all in red, who began, while he held her in his arms, by striking him again and again, pulling his hair, and tearing his face with her nails.
They thought at first that this frantic resistance was part of the performance, until they saw the blood flowing in a stream down the gypsy's nose.
He paid little heed to it, but said, as he wiped his face with his sleeve:
"That is nothing; the princess was asleep in her basket, and she is always cross when she wakes."
Then he added in Spanish, speaking to the child in an undertone.
"Never fear! you shall dance for this to-night!"
The child, whom he had deposited on the stone of Sinai, cowered like a monkey and glared about her with the eyes of a wild cat.
In her emaciated ugliness there were such strongly marked indications of suffering and of fierce temper, of unhappiness and of hatred, that she was almost beautiful, and indubitably terrifying.
It made Lauriane's heart ache to see the extreme emaciation of the wretched creature, who was almost naked under the gaudy, but filthy rags she wore. She shuddered as she thought of the probable fate of that child, driven to frenzy doubtless by the tyranny and the blows of a vile mountebank; and she walked away a few steps, leaning on the arm of her good Celadon, Bois-Doré, who, although he did not say so, felt almost as distressed as she.
But De Beuvre was of tougher fibre, and he urged La Flèche to make the evil spirit speak.