He hoped that D'Alvimar would retire, and that he could make some pleasant prediction for the others, for which they would pay handsomely; for in the three days that he had been wandering about the neighborhood, prowling everywhere, listening at doors, or pretending not to understand French to induce people to talk in his presence, he had learned many things; and he knew one fact about D'Alvimar which that gentleman would have been very glad to bury in profound oblivion. But D'Alvimar, tranquillized by the trivial nature of the predictions, did not retire; La Flèche had ceased to entertain any of the party, and was on the point of making a fiasco, after great preparations to reap a fine harvest. They were about to dismiss him. He drew himself up. "Illustrious noble lords," he said, "I am not a sorcerer, I swear it by the image of my patron saint which I wear upon my breast; I protest against any compact with the devil. I practise only white magic, permitted by the ecclesiastical authorities; but----" "Well, if you are not pledged to the devil, go to the devil!" laughed Monsieur de Beuvre; "you bore us!" "Very good," said La Flèche insolently; "you want black magic, and you shall have it, at your own risk and peril! but I will have nothing to do with it, I wash my hands of it!" He turned at once to a basket which he had brought with him, and in which they supposed that he kept some juggling apparatus or some strange beast, and took from it a little girl of eight or ten years, who seemed to be no more than four or five, she was so small and slender; and, with all the rest, dark-skinned, with a tangled mass of hair; a veritable imp, dressed all in red, who began, while he held her in his arms, by striking him again and again, pulling his hair, and tearing his face with her nails. They thought at first that this frantic resistance was part of the performance, until they saw the blood flowing in a stream down the gypsy's nose. He paid little heed to it, but said, as he wiped his face with his sleeve: "That is nothing; the princess was asleep in her basket, and she is always cross when she wakes." Then he added in Spanish, speaking to the child in an undertone. "Never fear! you shall dance for this to-night!" The child, whom he had deposited on the stone of Sinai, cowered like a monkey and glared about her with the eyes of a wild cat. In her emaciated ugliness there were such strongly marked indications of suffering and of fierce temper, of unhappiness and of hatred, that she was almost beautiful, and indubitably terrifying.