Madame Roussillon had fled into the adjoining room. Jean had also
disappeared. The officer, a subaltern, in charge of the guard,
seeing Alice, and not quickly able to make out that it was a woman
thus defying him, crossed swords with her. There was small space
for action; moreover the officer being not in the least a
swordsman, played awkwardly, and quick as a flash his point was
down. The rapier entered just below his thread with a dull
chucking stab. He leaped backward, feeling at the same time a pair
of arms clasp his legs. It was Jean, and the Lieutenant, thus
unexpectedly tangled, fell to the floor, breaking but not
extinguishing the guard's lantern as he went down. The little
remaining oil spread and flamed up brilliantly, as if eager for
conflagration, sputtering along the uneven boards.
"Kill that devil!" cried the Lieutenant, in a strangling voice,
while trying to regain his feet. "Shoot! Bayonet!"
In his pain, rage and haste, he inadvertently set his hand in the
midst of the blazing oil, which clung to the flesh with a seething
grip.
"Hell!" he screamed, "fire, fire!"
Two or three bayonets were leveled upon Alice. Some one kicked
Jean clean across the room, and he lay there curled up in his
hairy night-wrap looking like an enormous porcupine.
At this point a new performer came upon the stage, a dark-robed
thing, so active that its outlines changed elusively, giving it no
recognizable features.
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