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"Henri," said his companion to him, "we are betrayed." "By whom, my good Ferragus?" "They are not all asleep," replied the chief of the Devourers; "it is absolutely certain that some one in the house has neither eaten nor drunk.... Look! see that light!" "We have a plan of the house; from where does it come?" "I need no plan to know," replied Ferragus; "it comes from the room of the Marquise."

These two attempts at murder were planned with an ability which denoted the enmity of intelligent minds. "It is war to the death," he said to himself, as he tossed in his bed, "a war of savages, skulking in ambush, of trickery and treachery, declared in the name of Madame Jules. What sort of man is this to whom she belongs? What species of power does this Ferragus wield?"

Saxo, the grammarian, mentions a giant 13 1/2 feet high and says he had 12 companions who were double his height. Ferragus, the monster supposed to have been slain by Roland, the nephew of Charlemagne, was said to have been nearly 11 feet high. It was said that there was a giant living in the twelfth century under the rule of King Eugene II of Scotland who was 11 1/2 feet high.

Too passionately excited to think of himself, Auguste bowed, went down the stairs, and returned home, striving to find a meaning in the connection of these three persons, Ida, Ferragus, and Madame Jules; an occupation equivalent to that of trying to arrange the many-cornered bits of a Chinese puzzle without possessing the key to the game.

Auguste showed the folded letter. The old woman shook her head with a doubtful air, hesitated, seemed to wish to leave the lodge and inform the mysterious Ferragus of his unexpected visitor, but finally said: "Very good; go up, monsieur. I suppose you know the way?"

But Ferragus lay so uncomfortably for the want of a pillow that Orlando took pity upon him, and brought a smooth stone and placed it under his head. When the giant woke up, after a refreshing nap, and perceived what Orlando had done, he seemed quite grateful, became sociable, and talked freely in the usual boastful style of such characters.

Perhaps, also, Monsieur Jules and Ferragus XXIII. may have proved sufficiently interesting to make a few words on their after life not entirely out of place. Besides, some persons like to be told all, and wish, as one of our cleverest critics has remarked, to know by what chemical process oil was made to burn in Aladdin's lamp.

Without replying to this remark, which he thought might be a trap, the young officer ran lightly up the stairway, and rang loudly at the door of the second floor. His lover's instinct told him, "She is there." The beggar of the porch, Ferragus, the "orther" of Ida's woes, opened the door himself.

Would you see me die? Ah! I have suffered so much that my life, I feel it! is in danger." "And all because of the curiosity of that miserable Parisian?" cried Ferragus. "I'd burn Paris down if I lost you, my daughter. Ha! you may know what a lover is, but you don't yet know what a father can do." "Father, you frighten me when you look at me in that way.

"If so, my daughter, tell him to go to the Portuguese embassy and see the Comte de Funcal, your father. I will be there." "But Monsieur de Maulincour has told him of Ferragus. Oh, father, what torture, to deceive, deceive, deceive!" "Need you say that to me? But only a few days more, and no living man will be able to expose me. Besides, Monsieur de Maulincour is beyond the faculty of remembering.