e, if he hates me, it is all over."

She waited for one look, did not obtain it, and fell, half dead. The
mulatto cast a glance at Henri, so horribly significant, that, for the
first time in his life, the young man, to whom no one denied the gift of
rare courage, trembled. "_If you do not love her well, if you give her
the least pain, I will kill you_." such was the sense of that brief
gaze. De Marsay was escorted, with a care almost obsequious, along the
dimly lit corridor, at the end of which he issued by a secret door into
the garden of the Hotel San-Real. The mulatto made him walk cautiously
through an avenue of lime trees, which led to a little gate opening upon
a street which was at that hour deserted. De Marsay took a keen notice
of everything. The carriage awaited him. This time the mulatto did not
accompany him, and at the moment when Henri put his head out of the
window to look once more at the gardens of the hotel, he encountered the
white eyes of Cristemio, with whom he exchanged a glance. On either side
there was a provocation, a challenge, the declaration of a savage
war, of a duel in which ordinary laws were invalid, where treason and
treachery were admitted means. Cristemio knew that Henri had sworn
Paquita's death. Henri knew that Cristemio would like to kill him before
he killed Paquita. Both understood each other to perfection.

"The adventure is growing complicated in a most interesting way," said
Henri.

"Where is the gentleman going to?" asked the coachman.

De Marsay was driven to the house of Paul de Manerville. For more than a
week Henri was away from home, and no one could discover either what he
did during this period, nor where he stayed. This retreat saved him from
the fury of the mulatto and caused the ruin of the charming creature who
had placed all her hope in him whom she loved as never human heart had
loved on this earth before. On the last day of the week, about eleven
o'clock at night, Henri drove up in a carriage to the little gate in the
garden of the Hotel San-Real. Four men accompanied him. The driver was
evidently one of his friends, for he stood up on his box, like a man who
was to listen, an attentive sentinel, for the least sound. One of the
other three took his stand outside the gate in the street; the second
waited in the garden, leaning against the wall; the last, who carried in
his hand a bunch of keys, accompanied De Marsay.

"Henri," said his companion to him, "we ar