A loud outcry instantly took place; "The man's mad!" "What is he about?" "Turn him out!" "Throw him out of the window!" cried a dozen voices. "You shall do it, if you like, gentlemen," cried I, "provided this man has not two false dice under his hand." As I spoke, I lifted his hand from the table, when, to my horror and surprise, there were no dice there. I was dumb as if thunderstruck, and my adversary, with every feature convulsed with rage, lifted the hand I had liberated, and struck me a violent blow in the face. Instinctively I laid my hand upon my sword, when every one round threw themselves upon me, and in the midst of a thousand blows, I was hurried to the window, and though struggling violently to save myself, pitched over into the street. CHAPTER XXXI. Luckily, the window from which I was thrown was on the first floor, and not above sixteen feet raised from the ground. My fall, therefore, was so instantaneous, that I had no time to indulge in any of the pleasing anticipations of which a journey head-foremost from a high window to the ground is susceptible. The fall, however, was sufficient to stun and bewilder me; and before I had well recovered my recollection, I found myself surrounded by a good number of lackeys with torches, who had seen my sudden ejaculation from the gaming-house while they were accompanying some carriage through the streets, and had come to my assistance, with many inquiries as to whether I was hurt. I had fallen upon my left shoulder and hip, and my head had fortunately escaped without the same sudden contact with the stones; so that, though somewhat confused, I could reply that I believed I was not much injured, but that I could not rise without assistance. "Help him to rise," cried a voice, which very much resembled that of the Chevalier de Montenero, "and give him what assistance you can." The person who spoke I could not see; but the servants, who had been hitherto gazing at me without lending me any very substantial aid, now hurried to raise me, one taking me by each arm. This proceeding, however, gave me such exquisite pain in my left shoulder, that after a groan or two, and an ineffectual effort to make them comprehend that they were inflicting on me the tortures of the damned, I lost all recollection with the excess of agony. When I recovered my perception of what was passing around me, I found that the servants had procured a kind of _brancard_, or litter, and having laid me upon it, were carrying me on, I conjectured, to the house of some surgeon. They stopped, however, a moment after, at the entrance of what was evidently a very handsome private hotel, and passing through the _porte cochère_ and the court, they bore me into an immense _salle-à-manger_, and thence into a small chamber beyond, where I was carefully laid on a bed, and bade to compose myself, as a surgeon had been sent for, and would arrive, they expected, immediately.