This was his story: When he entered the room with Bousquier, lawyer Fualdes was seated at the table, and was made to sign papers. The tall, powerful man, Bastide Grammont, of course--no doubt it was Grammont; Bach in this relied upon the information of the magistrate and upon glib Rumor--stuck the signed papers in his pocket-book. In the meanwhile Madame Bancal cooked a supper, chicken with vegetables, and veal with rice; an important detail, indicating the cold-bloodedness of the murderers. Shortly before eight o'clock two drummers came in, but the face of the host or of the strange gentleman displeased them; they thought they were in the way and left, whereupon the gate was locked. But there was a knocking several times after that; the preconcerted signal was three rapid knocks with the fist, and one after the other there entered the soldier Colard with his sweetheart, the humpbacked Missonier, an aristocratic looking veiled lady with green feathers in her hat, and a tobacco-dealer in a blue coat. The hat with the green feathers was a special proof of Bach's powers of invention, and stood out with picturesque verisimilitude against the blue-coated tobacconist. At half past eight Madame Bancal went up to the attic to put her daughter Madeleine to bed, and now Bastide Grammont explained to the old man that he must die. The imploring supplications of the victim resulted only in the powerful Bastide seizing him, and, in spite of his violent resistance, laying him on the table, from which Bancal hastily removed two loaves of bread which some one had brought along. Fualdes begged pitifully that he might be given time to reconcile himself with God, but Bastide Grammont replied gruffly: "Reconcile yourself with the devil." Here M. Jausion interrupted the relation, and inquired whether a hand-organ had not perchance at that moment commenced to play in front of the house. Bach eagerly confirmed the supposition, and continued his report, which now wrought up the narrator himself to a pitch of excitement and horror: Colard and Bancal held the old man's legs, while the tobacconist and his sweetheart seized his head and arms. A gentleman with a wooden leg and a three-cornered hat held a candle high in the air. There was something weird about the emergence of this new figure; if it stood for nothing more than a finishing touch to the horror of that night of murder, it fulfilled its aim to perfection. The wooden-legged man uplifting the candle was like an impious spirit from the nether world, and it was not necessary to dwell upon the narrow chin, the sneering mouth, the spectral eye.