bleeding hands, which, without a doubt, had struggled long. Paquita must
have tried to reach the window; her bare feet had left their imprints
on the edge of the divan, along which she must have run. Her body,
mutilated by the dagger-thrusts of her executioner, told of the fury
with which she had disputed a life which Henri had made precious to her.
She lay stretched on the floor, and in her death-throes had bitten the
ankles of Madame de San-Real, who still held in her hand her dagger,
dripping blood. The hair of the Marquise had been torn out, she was
covered with bites, many of which were bleeding, and her torn dress
revealed her in a state of semi-nudity, with the scratches on her
breasts. She was sublime so. Her head, eager and maddened, exhaled the
odor of blood. Her panting mouth was open, and her nostrils were not
sufficient for her breath. There are certain animals who fall upon their
enemy in their rage, do it to death, and seem in the tranquillity of
victory to have forgotten it. There are others who prowl around their
victim, who guard it in fear lest it should be taken away from them, and
who, like the Achilles of Homer, drag their enemy by the feet nine times
round the walls of Troy. The Marquise was like that. She did not see
Henri. In the first place, she was too secure of her solitude to be
afraid of witnesses; and, secondly, she was too intoxicated with warm
blood, too excited with the fray, too exalted, to take notice of the
whole of Paris, if Paris had formed a circle round her. A thunderbolt
would not have disturbed her. She had not even heard Paquita's last
sigh, and believed that the dead girl could still hear her.

"Die without confessing!" she said. "Go down to hell, monster of
ingratitude; belong to no one but the fiend. For the blood you gave him
you owe me all your own! Die, die, suffer a thousand deaths! I have
been too kind--I was only a moment killing you. I should have made you
experience all the tortures that you have bequeathed to me. I--I shall
live! I shall live in misery. I have no one left to love but God!"

She gazed at her.

"She is dead!" she said to herself, after a pause, in a violent
reaction. "Dead! Oh, I shall die of grief!"

The Marquise was throwing herself upon the divan, stricken with a
despair which deprived her of speech, when this movement brought her in
view of Henri de Marsay.

"Who are you?" she asked, rushing at him with her dagger raised.

Henri caught he