He would have wounded him at least, if he had not strangled him, had he not been thrown back by a vigorous kick from Lucilio, which sent him rolling over and over along the ground. The sudden interruption of the music, and the plaintive sound made by the bagpipe as the artist dropped it, caused Lauriane to turn hastily. Entirely ignorant of what was taking place, she ran up in time to see D'Alvimar, frantic with rage, disemboweling the beast with his knife. He performed that act of reprisal with all the heat of revenge. It was easy to read on his pale face and in his bloodshot eye the profound and incomprehensible joy that he felt in having something to murder. Thrice he buried the blade in the throbbing entrails, and at the sight of blood his lips contracted with an expression of voluptuous pleasure, while Lauriane, trembling from head to foot, pressed Lucilio's arms with both hands, saying in a low voice: "Look! look! Cæsar Borgia! it is he in person!" Lucilio, who had often seen at Rome the portrait painted by Raphael, was even better able to appreciate the resemblance, and nodded his head to indicate that he was deeply impressed by it. "How now, monsieur?" said the young woman, deeply moved, to the triumphant Spaniard; "do you think that you are in the heart of the forest, and do you expect to make yourself agreeable to me by presenting me with the head or the claws of a creature that I have fed with my own hands, and that I was caressing before you a moment ago? For shame! you are not civil; and with that bloody knife in your hand, you look more like a butcher than a gentleman!" Lauriane was angry; she had no other feeling now for the stranger than one of aversion. He, as if emerging from a dream, apologized, saying that the wolf had tried to devour him; that such creatures were bad company in a house, and that he was very glad to have rescued _madame_ from an accident which might as well have happened to her as to him. "Do you mean that he attacked you?" she said, and glanced at Lucilio, who nodded assent.--"Did he bite you?" she added; "where is the wound?" And as D'Alvimar had not even a scratch, she was indignant that he had manifested fear of a beast that was so young and so far from dangerous. "The word fear is not very fair to me," he replied in a sort of frenzy; "I did not suppose that it could be thrown at one who still holds the instrument of death in his hands." "How proud you are of having killed that young wolf! A child could have done it, and it would have been pardonable in a child, but not in a man, who could easily have got rid of him with a blow of a whip. I tell you, messire, you were terribly frightened, and fright is the disease of those who love to shed blood."