specting mischief. The
stranger could only say, 'Be on your guard--' when she dropped down
dead. It was the waiting-woman, who, finding she had been poisoned, had
hoped to arrive in time to warn her lover.

"'Devil take it!' cried Captain Falcon, 'that is what I call love! No
woman on earth but a Spaniard can run about with a dose of poison in her
inside!'

"Bega remained strangely pensive. To drown the dark presentiments that
haunted him, he sat down to table again, and with his companions drank
immoderately. The whole party went early to bed, half drunk.

"In the middle of the night the hapless Bega was aroused by the sharp
rattle of the curtain rings pulled violently along the rods. He sat up
in bed, in the mechanical trepidation which we all feel on waking with
such a start. He saw standing before him a Spaniard wrapped in a cloak,
who fixed on him the same burning gaze that he had seen through the
bushes.

"Bega shouted out, 'Help, help, come at once, friends!' But the Spaniard
answered his cry of distress with a bitter laugh.--'Opium grows for
all!' said he.

"Having thus pronounced sentence as it were, the stranger pointed to the
three other men sleeping soundly, took from under his cloak the arm of
a woman, freshly amputated, and held it out to Bega, pointing to a mole
like that he had so rashly described. 'Is it the same?' he asked. By
the light of the lantern the man had set on the bed, Bega recognized the
arm, and his speechless amazement was answer enough.

"Without waiting for further information, the lady's husband stabbed him
to the heart."

"You must tell that to the marines!" said Lousteau. "It needs their
robust faith to swallow it! Can you tell me which told the tale, the
dead man or the Spaniard?"

"Monsieur," replied the Receiver-General, "I nursed poor Bega, who died
five days after in dreadful suffering.--That is not the end.

"At the time of the expedition sent out to restore Ferdinand VII. I was
appointed to a place in Spain; but, happily for me, I got no further
than Tours when I was promised the post of Receiver here at Sancerre. On
the eve of setting out I was at a ball at Madame de Listomere's, where
we were to meet several Spaniards of high rank. On rising from the
card-table, I saw a Spanish grandee, an _afrancesado_ in exile, who had
been about a fortnight in Touraine. He had arrived very late at this
ball--his first appearance in society--accompanied by his wife, whose
right