"No, the weather will be fair; but you will be dead!" said the sibyl, wiping the cold perspiration from her forehead with her hair. "Enough! let no one else question me! I shall say things that are too harsh to all of you here!" "You will take back your words, you wicked she-devil!" cried the young man who had procured for Mario the pleasure of this agreeable prophecy. "Do not let her leave the room, friends! These infernal witches lead us into death by the confusion they sow in our minds. They are the cause of our losing, in the face of danger, the confidence that saves. Let us compel her to swallow her words and to confess that she said them from pure deviltry." Pilar, supple as a snake, had already glided from the room. Some ran after her. Bellinde fled by another door. "Let them go," said Mario. "They are two venomous beasts whose story I will tell you some other time. I am not at all disturbed by the prediction; I have paid for my knowledge of what that noble science is worth!" They pressed Mario with questions. "To-morrow," he said, "after the battle, after my threatened death! Permit me now to go to see if my father is carefully guarded by his people; for I know one of those women, perhaps both of them, to be quite capable of seeking to injure him." "And we," replied his young friends, "will make a circuit of the village to be sure that there is no band of thieving, murdering gypsies in hiding anywhere." They made the circuit with great care. It seemed quite useless, the regular camp having sentries posted and vigilant patrols who covered all the neighborhood to a considerable distance. They learned from the villagers that the two women had arrived alone on the preceding day and lodged in a house which they pointed out. They declared that the women were then in the house, and Mario did not consider it necessary to set a watch upon them. It was enough in his judgment, to guard the house in which his father was. The night passed very quietly; too quietly for the liking of the impatient young gentlemen, who hoped to be awakened by the signal for battle. But they were disappointed. The Prince of Piedmont, brother-in-law of Louis XIII., had come on behalf of the Duc de Savoie to open negotiations, and the conferences effected a suspension of hostilities to the great dissatisfaction of the French army. The following day passed in feverish suspense, and the gypsy's prediction, having come to naught, ceased to alarm Mario's friends. The two vagabonds had packed up and passed through the vanguard on their way to France, there to ply their wandering trade. There was no fear that they would be allowed to retrace their steps. The cardinal had issued the strictest orders that all women and children, and especially women of disorderly lives, should be rigorously excluded from the camp-followers. Lewd women, gypsies, dancing girls and sorceresses were threatened with death if caught within the lines.