"Yes, I know it; and, what's still better, only one of the farm servants sleeps on the side of the house where we are. I know his door--the key is in it--click, one turn, and he's all safe and fast. Come, get up, old blind Cupid!" "Who told you all this?" asked the blind scoundrel, rising involuntarily. "Capital, Cupid! By the side of your wife's room sleeps an old cook--one more turn of the key, and click! we are masters of the house--masters of your wife, and the young girl with the gray mantle that you must catch hold of and carry off. Now, then, your paw, old Cupid; do the pretty to your master directly." "You lie! you lie! how could you know all this?" "Why, I'm lame in my leg, but not in my head. Before we left the kitchen I said to the old guzzling labourer that sometimes in the night you had convulsions, and I asked him where I could get assistance if you were attacked. He said if you were attacked I might call up the man servant and the cook; and he showed me where they slept; one down, the other up stairs in the first floor, close to your wife--your wife--your wife!" And Tortillard repeated his monotonous song. After a lengthened silence the Schoolmaster said to him, in a calm voice, but with an air of desperate determination: "Listen, boy. I have stayed long enough. Lately--yes, yes, I confess it--I had a hope which now makes my lot appear still more frightful; the prison, the _bagne_, the guillotine, are nothing--nothing to what I have endured since this morning; and I shall have the same to endure always. Lead me to my wife's room; I have my knife here; I will kill her. I shall be killed afterwards; but what of that? My hatred swells till it chokes me; I shall have revenge, and that will console me. What I now suffer is too much--too much! for me, too, before whom everybody trembled. Now, lad, if you knew what I endure, even you would pity me. Even now my brain appears ready to burst; my pulse beats as if my veins would burst; my head whirls--" "A cold in your 'knowledge-box,' old chap--that's it; sneeze--that'll cure you," said Tortillard, with a loud grin; "what say you to a pinch of snuff, old brick?" And striking loudly on the back of his left hand, which was clenched, as if he were tapping on the lid of a snuff-box, he sang: "J'ai du bon tabac dans ma tabatière; J'ai du bon tabac, tu n'en auras pas."