"Ah! there we are! the pretty boy is the stumbling-block. But never fear, I will treat him well if he behaves to me as he ought, and at my death your property can go back to him, provided that I am satisfied with him."
"You are mad, Bellinde!" cried the marquis, rising, "unless this is all a game——"
"It is not a game; and if you don't write at once what I demand," she said, rising in her turn, "why, death of my life! I will wake the captain and call my people upstairs!"
"Have me murdered, if you think best," replied Bois-Doré; "I will never give my consent to your mad whim! But understand that I will not allow my throat to be cut like a sheep, and that——"
The marquis, unsheathing his knife, had rushed toward the door to receive the assassins, whom Bellinde, suffocated with anger, was trying in vain to call, when Macabre suddenly staggered to his feet and threw at his wife's head a jug which would certainly have killed her if his hand had been steadier.
"Miserable slut!" he cried, chasing her about the room. "Ah! so you propose to marry your old marquis, do you? Perhaps you think I am deaf, and you don't know that Captain Macabre sleeps with one eye and one ear open! Stay here, marquis! I have nothing against you, for you refused the offers of this damned Potiphar. Stay here, I say! Help me catch this she-devil! I propose to wring her neck in proper form and make a drum-head of her skin!"
Despite these alluring invitations, the marquis, leaving the lovers at odds, had rushed into the hall, and Mario, terrified at the noise in the dining-room, had started to go to him. But they could neither go up nor down. On the one hand, Proserpine, pursued by Macabre, who was belaboring her with the rung of a chair, tumbled upon them on the stairs; on the other hand, the amazon's reitres rushed to the spot to adjust the conjugal dispute.
It was soon done.
La Proserpine, all dishevelled, rose and threw herself into the midst of them, and they, with no respect for the captain, seized him roughly, carried him back into the dining-room and locked him in there, laughing at his outcries and his threats.
Proserpine, accustomed to these tempests, was not long in recovering herself. She had no sooner swallowed a glass of gin, which one of her pages handed her, than she looked about with the eye of a bird of prey for her victim, who had taken refuge in a corner.