“Be quiet!” snapped Beaumagnan, in raging accents. He stuck a pad of cotton wool over Ralph’s mouth and fastened it in place by a handkerchief tied round his head. “A single sound--a single movement--and with one blow of my fist I’ll knock you into the abyss!” he snarled. He looked at him for a moment as if he were asking himself whether he had not better do it at once and be done with it. But of a sudden he left him, crossed the room on tiptoe and stretching himself at full length on the threshold, looked through the door which was a little way open. “Things are going badly,” thought Ralph, uncommonly anxious. “They are going all the more badly because I don’t understand at all what is really happening. How comes he to be here? Am I to suppose that he is the benefactor of the Widow Rousselin, that benefactor whom she did not wish to compromise?” That hypothesis did not satisfy him. “No: that isn’t it. I have fallen into a trap not because it was set for me but because I was foolishly careless. It’s plain that a beggar like Beaumagnan knows the whole Rousselin business, that he has learned of these meetings and the hour of these meetings; and then, knowing that the widow has been abducted, he watches and makes other people watch the neighborhood of Lillebonne and Tancarville. So it came about that they have discovered that I was on the spot and my goings and comings--and then the trap--and then----” This time Ralph’s conviction was profound, the conqueror of Beaumagnan at Paris, he had just lost the second engagement. Victorious in his turn, Beaumagnan had spread him out on a shutter like a bat nailed to a wall and was now looking out for the other person in order to seize him and tear the secret from him. One point however remained obscure. Why this attitude of a wild beast ready to spring upon its prey? That was quite out of keeping with the probably quite peaceful meeting which was to take place between him and that unknown person. Beaumagnan had only to go out and wait for him outside and say: “Madam Rousselin is ill and has sent me in her place. She would like to know the inscription engraved on the lid of the casket.” “Always supposing,” thought Ralph, “that Beaumagnan hasn’t reason to expect some other person to come--and that he does not distrust that person ... and that he is not preparing for another attack.” It was sufficient for such a question to present itself to Ralph for him to perceive at once the exact solution. To suppose that Beaumagnan had laid a trap for him, Ralph, was only half the truth. The ambush was a double one. Who then could Beaumagnan be looking for in this fever of exasperation if not for Josephine Balsamo?