“That’s it! That’s it!” said Ralph to himself, the facts of the matter at last clear to him. “He has guessed that she is alive. Yes, the other day in Paris when we had that tussle he must have guessed this amazing fact. And that’s another blunder I’ve made ... for lack of experience. Should I have spoken like that and acted like that if Josephine Balsamo were not alive? What? I told this man I had read between the lines of his letter to Baron Godfrey, that I was present at the famous gathering at La Haie d’Etigues, and yet failed to understand what he really had in store for the Countess of Cagliostro! And was it likely that a young fellow like me, so thoroughly alive, would abandon that charming woman? Come then: if I was at the trial I was certainly at the priest’s staircase. I was certainly present at the embarkation. I certainly rescued Josephine. And we loved one another not with a love which dated from last winter, as I pretended, but with a love posterior to Josephine’s supposed death!... That is what Beaumagnan said to himself.” Proof piled on proof. Events linked themselves together like the links of a chain. Entangled in the Rousselin affair and consequently sought for by Beaumagnan, Josephine had not failed to search the neighborhood of the lighthouse. Informed of this at once, Beaumagnan formed his ambuscade. Ralph had fallen into it; it was now the turn of Josephine! One would have said that Fate wished to confirm immediately the ideas which had been running through Ralph’s mind. He had scarcely reached this conclusion when there came the sound of a carriage coming up the road which runs along the canal under the cliff. On the instant, Ralph recognized the quick trot of Leonard’s horses. Beaumagnan, on his part, must have known what was happening, for he sprang up and listened. The noise of hoofs ceased, then began again slower. The carriage was mounting the rocky lane, which winds up towards the plateau and from which runs the forest path, in which there is no room for a carriage, which ascends the steep slope to the old lighthouse. In five minutes or less, Josephine would appear. Every second of every one of those solemn minutes increased the agitation and frenzy of Beaumagnan. He muttered incoherent words. His mask of romantic actor grew uglier and uglier till his face became of a purely bestial hideousness. The instinct, the will to murder contorted his features; and all at once it became clear that this will, this savage instinct were inflamed against Ralph, against Josephine’s lover.