Rosario followed her on her knees. At the same instant three blows were
heard, three crashes, three reports. It was the heart of Maria Remedios
knocking at the door through the knocker. The house trembled with awful
dread. Mother and daughter stood motionless as statues.

A servant went down stairs to open the door, and shortly afterward Maria
Remedios, who was not now a woman but a basilisk enveloped in a mantle,
entered Dona Perfecta's room. Her face, flushed with anxiety, exhaled
fire.

"He is there, he is there!" she said, as she entered. "He got into the
garden through the condemned door."

She paused for breath at every syllable.

"I know already," returned Dona Perfecta, with a sort of bellow.

Rosario fell senseless on the floor.

"Let us go down stairs," said Dona Perfecta, without paying any
attention to her daughter's swoon.

The two women glided down stairs like two snakes. The maids and the
man-servant were in the hall, not knowing what to do. Dona Perfecta
passed through the dining-room into the garden, followed by Maria
Remedios.

"Fortunately we have Ca-Ca-Ca-balluco there," said the canon's niece.

"Where?"