"You are not speaking seriously," said Hautefeuille.
"I never was more serious in my life," replied Corancez. "But it is written that I shall meet with a cheerful end. I do not lend myself to tragedy, it appears. In the first place, you know that my marriage was made public about five days ago. That is why you have not seen me before. I had to pay my wedding visits to all the highnesses and lords in Cannes. I met with a great deal of sympathy and provoked a vast amount of astonishment. Everybody was asking, 'But why did you have a secret marriage?' Acting under my advice, Andryana invented an old vow as the reason. Everybody thought it was very original and very charming.
"I had even too much success, above all with Alvise. He only made one reproach—that we had hidden it from him, that we had ever supposed for a moment he would have stood in the way of his sister's happiness. It was 'my brother' here, 'my brother' there. It was the only thing one heard in the entire house. But we Southerners understand revenge, particularly when Corsicans, Sardinians, or Italians are in question. I asked myself at every moment, 'When is the sword going to fall?'"
"It was very imprudent of him to get so quickly to work," interrupted Pierre.
"You don't know the anecdote," said Corancez, "of some one who saw a poor devil going past on his way to the gallows. 'There is a man who has miscalculated,' he said. Every murderer does that, and, after all, he hadn't calculated so badly as you think. Who would ever have suspected Count Alvise Navagero of having made away with his sister's husband, the man who was his intimate friend? I told you before that he was a man of the time of Machiavelli, very modernized.
"Just judge for yourself. I kept my eyes open, without appearing to notice anything. A couple of days ago, just about this hour, he proposed that we should go for a bicycle ride. It's funny, isn't it, the idea of Borgia bicycling along a public road with his future victim? I suppose I am the only one who ever enjoyed this spectacle. We were going along as quick as the wind, descending the winding road of Villauris upon the edge of a species of cliff which cut sheer down at one side, when suddenly I felt my machine double up under me. I was thrown about twenty metres—on the opposite side to the abyss, luckily. That's the cause of this cut. I was not killed. In fact, I was so little hurt that I distinctly read on my companion's face something which made me think that my accident belonged to the sixteenth century, in spite of the prosaic means employed. Navagero went off to get a carriage to bring me back. When I was alone I dragged myself to the ruins of my bicycle, which still lay in the road, and I saw that a file had been cleverly used on two of the pieces in such a way that, after a half hour of violent exercise, the whole thing would break up—and me with it."
"And didn't you have the wretch arrested?" asked Hautefeuille.
"Oh, I don't like a scandal in the family," replied Corancez, who was enjoying his effect. "Besides, my brother-in-law would have maintained that he had nothing to do with it. And how could I have proved that he had? No, I simply opened my other eye, the best one, knowing very well that he would not wait long before recommencing.
"Well, yesterday evening, before dinner, I entered the salon and there I found this rascal with his eyes gaining so brightly and with such a contented air that I said at once to myself, 'It is going to take place this evening.'
"I can't explain how it was that I began to think about Pope Alexander VI. and the poisoned wine which killed him. I suppose I have a good scent, like foxhounds. You know, or perhaps you don't know, that Andryana drinks nothing but water, and that Anglomaniac, my brother-in-law, only drinks whiskey and soda.