He had scarcely done so when he drew himself suddenly upright and remained in that position for a moment, his mouth half open, his eyes glaring. A kind of spasm seized him. His teeth shut with a click. He staggered and clutched at the table. His face grew red--purple. His brain seemed to be bursting; his eyes filled with blood. He tried to cry, to give the alarm, to get breath, but his throat was held in an iron vice. He was choking and reeling on his feet, when the man came by chance out of the bedroom. By a tremendous effort Vidoche spoke. "Who--made--this?" he muttered, in a hissing voice. The servant started, scared by his appearance. He answered, nevertheless, that he had mixed it himself. "Look at--the bottom of--the cup!" Vidoche replied in a terrible voice. He was swaying to and fro, and kept himself up only by his grip on the table. "Is there--anything there?" The servant was terribly frightened, but he had the sense to obey. He took up the cup and looked in it. "Is there--a powder--in it?" Vidoche asked, a frightful spasm distorting his features. "There is--something," the man answered, his teeth chattering. "But let me fetch help, my lord. You are not well. You are----" "A dead man!" the baffled murderer cried, his voice rising in a scream of indescribable despair and horror. "A dead man! I am poisoned! My wife!" He reeled with that word. He lost his hold of the table. "Ha, _mon Dieu!_ Mercy! Mercy!" he cried. In a moment he was down, writhing on the floor, and uttering shriek on shriek: cries so dreadful that on the instant doors flew open and sleepers awoke, and in a twinkling the room--though the lamp lay quenched, overturned in his struggles--was full of lights and frightened faces and huddled forms, and women who stopped their ears and wept. The doorways framed more faces, the staircase rang with sounds of alarm. Everywhere was turmoil and a madness of hurrying feet. One ran for the doctor, another for the priest, a third for the watch. The house seemed on a sudden alive; nay, the very courtyard, where the porter was gone from his post, and the doors stood open, was full of staring strangers, who gaped at the windows and the hurrying lights, and asked whose was the hotel, or answered it was M. de Vidoche's. [Illustration: "IN A MOMENT HE WAS DOWN, WRITHING ON THE FLOOR" (_p_. 133).]