Then, tottering, and with great effort, he dragged himself back to the torch still burning near the iron door; this he seized, after putting down his pistol, and then, supporting with his left hand the protruding intestines, with his right he lowered the torch until it touched the sulphur-match, which caught fire, and the wick blazed up in an instant. Dropping the still burning torch upon the ground, he grasped his pistol, and although he had fallen on the flags, he lifted himself and used the scanty breath that was left him to fan the flame, which, starting, ran along until it passed under the iron door and reached the bridge-castle. When he beheld the triumph of his villanous scheme, taking to himself more credit for this crime than for his self-sacrifice, the man who had acted the part of a hero and who now degraded himself to the level of an assassin smiled as he was about to die, and muttered:-- "They will remember me. I take vengeance on their little ones, in behalf of our own little king shut up in the Temple." [Illustration 121] XIV. THE IMÂNUS ALSO ESCAPES. [Illustration 122] At that moment a loud voice was heard, and the chest, violently hurled aside, was shattered into fragments,--giving passage to a man, who, sabre in hand, rushed into the hall. "It is I, Radoub!" he cried. "Who wants to fight me? I am bored to death with waiting, and I must run the risk. I don't care what happens; at all events, I have disembowelled one of you, and now I come to attack you all. Follow me or not, as you like; but here I am. How many are you?" It was indeed Radoub himself, and he alone. After the slaughter that the Imânus had made on the staircase, Gauvain, suspecting some hidden mine, had withdrawn his men and was taking counsel with Cimourdain. Amid the darkness, where the expiring torch cast but a feeble glimmer, Radoub, sabre in hand, stood on the threshold and repeated his question,-- "I am alone. How many are you?" Receiving no reply, he advanced. Just then one of those sudden flashes, emitted from time to time by a dying fire,--a kind of throbbing light, which might be compared with a human sob,--burst from the torch and illuminated the entire hall. Radoub caught sight of one of the little mirrors hung on the wall, and approaching it, inspected his bloody face and lacerated ear, saying as he did so,-- "What a horrible mutilation!" Then he turned, surprised to see the hall empty, and cried,-- "No one here! not a soul!" His eyes lighted on the revolving stone, the passage, and the staircase. "Ah, I understand! they have taken to their heels! Come on, comrades! come on! They have all run away; they have gone, evaporated, dissolved, vanished. There was a crack in this old jug of a tower; there is the hole through which they got out, the rascals! How are we ever to get the better of Pitt and Coburg, when men play tricks like these? The Devil himself must have come to their aid. There is no one here!"