But the sudden spectacle of the thin man across the road biding the pelting of a pitiless storm of confetti from three several silken dominos at once, with bent head and a face of resigned anguish, was so joyous that Ermengarde forgot her momentary desire to murder Dorris; and when Mr. Welbourne had taken refuge in such flight in an opposite direction as his infirmity permitted, the temporary blinding and partial choking of Miss Boundrish, who had received a dexterous handful while enjoying a hearty, but unconcealed, yawn, further blunted the edge of her murderous desires, and made her offer Eau de Cologne instead of poison, with whole-hearted enjoyment of the damsel's spluttering indignation and vehement assertions that she was poisoned. "In that case," it was suggested, "best take an emetic at once," a proposition received with scorn and fury, and further declarations that she was blinded for life, and wondered why there were no gens d'armes, and considered that the least Mrs. Allonby could have done was to give the beast into custody, and she wished she had brought her father. "But you can't give a large green frog on the top of a mountain on wheels into custody, dear Miss Boundrish--Oh! pff!" It was now Ermengarde's turn to be pelted by a Cyrano de Bergerac, whose enormous nose was in striking contrast to his slender, elastic figure. The Cyrano, who had been one of the party in the carriage whence the serpent with the letter in its tail was thrown to Agatha, soon tired of raining paper on to a steadily held sunshade, and went away, finding better sport in a silken domino, one of a group walking in the road, who showed fight gallantly, revealing a pair of dark eyes flashing with spirit and challenge. After a sharp engagement, the domino's ammunition having run out, she turned and ran, pursued and stopped by the Cyrano, who pelted her unmercifully in the face, even holding a fold of the domino and spirting the confetti under it to make her uncover, till at last he brought her to bay just under the side of the stand, off the street. "Beast!" muttered Ermengarde, her indignation intensified by the English accent of the unchivalrous Cyrano. She would actually have rushed to the assistance of the wronged lady, but that help came from another quarter in the shape of a crocodile, which suddenly descended in a series of astonishingly agile leaps from the very top of the great, shell-shaped car of crocodiles, that was lumbering by, and, seizing the Cyrano de Bergerac by the scruff of his neck, shook him like a rat till he was forced to let go the lady, just as she slipped the domino back, discovering the indignant, tearful face and blazing eyes of Mlle. Bontemps. This revelation was evidently more discomfiting to the Cyrano than the furious assault of the crocodile, from the slit-open throat of which glared the face of M. Isidore, white with fury.