"Ah, viper, I feel your teeth!" he exclaimed in a voice that shook with passion, and seizing, with all his might, the Chouette, who had thought thus to escape him. "You are in this dungeon, then?" he added, with an air of madness. "But I will crush the viper or screech-owl. No doubt you were waiting for the coming of the phantoms. Yes; for the blood beats in my temples,--? my ears ring,--my head turns--as when they are about to appear! Yes; I was not deceived; here they are,--they advance from the depths of darkness,--they advance! How pale they are; and their blood, how it flows,--red and smoking! It frightens you,--you struggle. Well, be still, you shall not see the phantoms,--no, you shall not see them. I have pity on you; I will make you blind. You shall be, like me,--eyeless!" Here the Schoolmaster paused. The Chouette uttered a cry so horrible that Tortillard, alarmed, bounded off the step, and stood up. The horrid shrieks of the Chouette served to place the copestone on the fury of the Schoolmaster. "Sing," he said, in a low voice, "sing, Chouette,--night-bird! Sing your song of death! You are happy; you do not see three phantoms of those we have assassinated,--the little old man in the Rue du Roule, the drowned woman, the cattle-dealer. I see them; they approach; they touch me. Ah, so cold,--so cold! Ah!" The last gleam of sense of this unhappy wretch was lost in this cry of condemnation. He could no longer reason, but acted and roared like a wild beast, and only obeyed the savage instinct of destruction for destruction. A hurried trampling was now heard, interrupted frequently at intervals with a heavy sound, which appeared like a box of bones bounding against a stone, upon which it was intended to be broken. Sharp, convulsive shrieks, and a burst of hellish laughter accompanied each of these blows. Then there was a gasp of agony. Then--nothing. Suddenly a distant noise of steps and voices reached the depths of the subterranean vault. Tortillard, frozen with terror by the fearful scene at which he had been present without seeing it, perceived several persons holding lights, who descended the staircase rapidly. In a moment the cave was full of agents of safety, led by Narcisse Borel. The Municipal Guards followed. Tortillard was seized on the first steps of the cellar, with the Chouette's basket still in his hand.