"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. "'I think to-night,' I said, when we were at table, and wine was offered me, 'I think I will follow your example. Give me some whiskey.' "'All right,' he replied. "To be poisoned with an English drink by a Venetian struck me as rather novel. At the same time he was so calm when I refused to take any wine that I thought I must have been mistaken. But he praised a certain port that he has received from Lord Herbert so highly that I at once had the idea that this was the particular wine I must not touch. He pressed it upon me. I allowed the servant to pour me out a glass and smelled it. "'What a singular odor,' I said to him, calmly. 'I am sure there must be something in this wine.' "'It must be a bad bottle,' said Navagero; 'throw it away.'