"Is it a man, or a lady, or a place?"
"It's a monster!" shrieked the Princess. "It kills, and eats, and destroys." And then followed a faithful repetition of Auguste Philippe's description of the beast. The witch-wife laughed and rocked to and fro, her yellow teeth showing in her shrunken gums.
"Oh, deary, deary, deary!" she said, "there ain't any such critter, truly there ain't. I've lived here in the swamp seventy-nine year; I never saw one, and I sees pretty nigh everything."
"Who eats the youths and the maidens, and the old men and the children?" demanded the Princess sternly.
"How do I know? How do I know?" cackled the old woman. "I don't."
The Princess Victorine rode away, and behind her the witch-wife laughed.
"That's the way the pretty knight went," she called. "You'll find him further on."
The Princess indignantly turned her charger and rode in the opposite direction. That morning came her moment of great reward, for, by the side of a noxious swamp, a gray mist met her, blinding her eyes, and she thought she heard sounds of gurgling and lashing and clawing. Once she caught sight of the great shining eye of which Auguste Philippe had told her, and then she dimly detected the grin of teeth. Olivera Rinalda Victorine was sure that she had met the Microbe at last. With lifted spear, and with the shout, "A maiden to the rescue!" she rode into the floating cloud and thrust it through and through. Her spear crashed on—something; her charger seemed to trample a living creature under foot, and snorted with terror. Thrice came swift blows upon the Princess's shield, but whether they were of claws or tail, she could not tell. Her ears were deafened by the noise; her armor ripped in the gathers at the waist; her good steed for a moment lost his footing in the morass, but she reined him up, and, mad with the thrill of victory, struck out again and again with more than woman's strength. Then, was it fancy, or did she hear a roar as of mortal pain? Did she catch the sound of swift retreat of a hundred thousand wounded legs?
At home, upon the battlements, that morning, stood Auguste Philippe with some ladies of the court. (Lady Marie was lovely in deepest crêpe, and the Duchess was looking her best in heavy mourning.)
"It was in that direction that she went, did you say?" sobbed the Duchess, with a black-bordered handkerchief at her eyes.