Mario seized the handkerchief, which might have betrayed their identity, and tossed it into the hot fire, where it disappeared like a match. Jacques wiped away the blood and bandaged his wound with a napkin. "Don't be alarmed," he said to Madame Pignoux; "they let me come here to wait on them. Give me the larding-knife, and the night shall not pass without my ripping up one or two of them." "You will get yourself killed," said the hostess. "That's of no consequence," replied Jacques. "But you will get us killed too!" "Jacques," said the marquis, "look at this child, and don't say a word. Help him to leave this house, if you can, but be prudent if you love us." Jacques glanced stealthily at Mario, and, without making any reply, went several times to the pantry, as if to attend to his duties, but in reality to examine the men who were pacing back and forth with the regularity of machines. "Those German curs!" he said to the marquis, "they don't eat nor drink nor sleep until they have killed off everybody." "And they know what discipline means too!" rejoined the marquis, with a sigh. "Ah! it can't be denied that the _reitres_ are stout soldiers! If our good Henri had had ten thousand of them, he would have been king ten years earlier!" "Cook, father, cook!" said Mario, "the lieutenant is looking at you!" "He may look at me all he chooses, my son; I know how to handle a saucepan as well as Master Pignoux himself." "That's the truth," said the hostess; "anyone would swear that you had studied cooking!" "I studied it in the field, Madame Pignoux; I have made a fricassee for my Henri with my sword at my side and my helmet on my head. Who would have dreamed that I would ever do the same for a Macabre and his better half? She is some prostitute, I fancy!" At that moment Madame Proserpine's voice rose above the others, which had drowned it thus far. "Pah! how it smells of burned fat!" she exclaimed; "it is enough to make one sick! Let's go up; let's go up at once! Come, lieutenant, give me your hand, _sacrebleu_!" Monsieur de Bois-Doré and his son glanced at each other then looked down into their saucepans. This amazon, who, after conversing confidentially with the captain and lieutenant at the door of the inn, now strode slowly across the kitchen, resplendent in her warlike costume, and tossing beneath the multicolored plumes of her headgear her abundant bright red mane, this Madame Proserpine, the more or less lawful spouse of Captain Macabre, was the marquis's former housekeeper, Mario's personal enemy, Guillette Carcat of La Châtre, Bellinde of Briantes. "We are lost," thought the marquis; "she will surely recognize us!" "We are saved," thought Mario; "she does not recognize us!" And, to make his disguise more complete, he too enveloped himself in an enormous apron which came to his chin, and passed his little soot-begrimed hands over his red cheeks.