hard and very mocking laugh. I had always attributed that sort of
reply to an artifice which the occasion required. It was
intended, I thought, to accentuate the danger she incurred and
the contempt that she felt for it, thanks to the sureness of the
thrower's hands, and so I was very much surprised when the
mountebank said to me:

"Have you observed her laugh, I say? Her evil laugh which makes
fun of me, and her cowardly laugh which defies me? Yes, cowardly,
because she knows that nothing can happen to her, nothing, in
spite of all she deserves, in spite of all that I ought to do to
her, in spite of all that I WANT to do to her."

"What do you want to do?"

"Confound it! Cannot you guess? I want to kill her."

"To kill her, because she has--"

"Because she has deceived me? No, no, not that, I tell you again.
I have forgiven her for that a long time ago, and I am too much
accustomed to it! But the worst of it is that the first time I
forgave her, when I told her that all the same I might some day
have my revenge by cutting her throat, if I chose, without
seeming to do it on purpose, as if it were an accident, mere
awkwardness--"

"Oh! So you said that to her?"

"Of course I did, and I meant it. I thought I might be able to do