If anything could have rendered so dreadful a sight as the corpse of the murderer with his blackened temples, clenched hands, and cold meaningless glare of eye, in any degree ridiculous, it would have been to see the little player cast upon the ground beside the vast bulk of the dead man, striving to imitate the position in which he lay; and every now and then raising his pert head from his mockery of death's stillness, and peeping over the corpse to see how the arm or the hand had fallen in dying. I was in no mood, however, for such fooleries; my head ached violently from the blow I had received above the eye; my hands, especially the one that had intercepted the stab of the knife, gave me intolerable pain. I was fatigued also, and fevered with the struggle and the agitation, so that my corporeal sensations were not at all favourable to the wretched player's buffoonery, even had the scene been one that admitted of merriment. Stirring him then rather rudely with my foot, I bade him rise and assist in carrying the body to the cottage. Up started the actor in a moment, and, taking the corpse by the feet, replied he was ready to do anything the manager bade him: one of the cottagers lent his aid, and we soon reached the cottage with our burden. Here all the women made a vast outcry at the sight of the dead body, but more still on beholding the state in which the assassin's efforts had left their young Count Louis, for I was now within the old domain of our own château. I know not whether from the loss of blood, or the irritating pain of the wounds, but I certainly felt very faint, and probably my countenance showed how much I was suffering, for while the young Arnault and some others were examining the person of the dead man, and taking what papers and effects he had upon him, the player stepped forward, and offered to render me his assistance as a surgeon. Thinking that the devil of buffoonery still possessed him, I repulsed him somewhat rudely; but yet unrepelled, he laid his hand upon his heart, made me a low bow, and said, "Listen, noble youth, scion of an illustrious house, and you shall hear that which shall make you yield yourself to my hands, as willingly as Maladine gave herself up to Milsenio. Know then, before my superior genius prompted me to fit on the buskin, I trod the stage of life in a high-heeled shoe--not, indeed, the Cothurnus; far, far from it, for in those days, alas! though I was clothed in tragic black, and held the dagger and the bowl, I shed real blood behind the curtain, and inflicted my cruelties on the real flesh and blood." "I begin somewhat to understand you," I replied; "but if you would have me attend to you seriously, my friend, you must drop that exalted style, and speak common sense in common language."