"It is too late, monsieur," said Aristandre to his young master. "What would you have! It was I who crushed him, and I was not gentle about it; but it wasn't I who stuffed his mouth with dirt and stones to stifle him. I should never have thought of that."
"Dirt and stones?" repeated Mario, looking with horror and amazement at the gypsy, who was actually suffocating. "He spoke just now! he must have gnawed at the ground in his struggle against death!"
As he leaned over the wretched creature to try to relieve him, La Flèche, whose face already wore the pallor of a corpse, moved his arms as if to say: "It is useless; let me die in peace."
Then his arm fell with the forefinger extended, as if he were pointing to his murderer, and so remained, stiffened by death, which had already quenched the light of his eyes.
Mario's eyes instinctively turned in the direction indicated by that horrible gesture, and saw no one. Doubtless the gypsy, as he breathed his last, had seen a vision bearing some relation to his melancholy and evil life.
But Aristandre's attention was attracted by the fresh prints of tiny feet on the clayey soil. Those footprints were on all sides of the body, and seemed to indicate a trampling or stamping around the head; then they led away from the spot in the direction in which the gypsy's finger still pointed.
"There are some terrible children, eh?" said the honest coachman, calling Mario's attention to the marks. "I know that these gypsies are viler than dogs, and perhaps it was poor Charasson's boy, who, seeing that you were trying to save this beast, determined to finish him this way in order to avenge his father! It's a devilish invention all the same, and it is quite right to say that evil leads to evil."
"Yes, yes, my good friend," said the horrified Mario; "you understand that a dying man is no longer an enemy. But look in the bushes over there; isn't that little Pilar hiding?"
"I don't know who little Pilar is," Aristandre replied, "but I know that that little hussy is the one whose life I saved last night. See, there she goes again. She runs like a genuine cat. Do you recognize her now?"
"Yes," said Mario, "I know her too well, and it is clear that the evil one is in her. Let her go, coachman, and may she go far away from here!"