"Out with that money or you're a dead man," said the taller of the two Assassins.
In desperation the smaller of the two Assassins pulled out a long knife from his pocket, and tried to pry Pinocchio's mouth open with it.
The idea of the two soldiers who had abandoned him occurred to his mind, and with them he remembered the assassins of two evenings before.
The assassins comprehended that if they fled toward the camp without having killed their man, they should be accused by him; therefore their first idea was to join the enemy.
"Come, come," continued the count, "I see you are still the same, -- an assassin."
At the same moment the count seized with his left hand the assassin's wrist, and wrung it with such strength that the knife fell from his stiffened fingers, and Caderousse uttered a cry of pain.
How, at the house of entertainment called the Break of Day at Chalons on the Saone, he had been awakened in his bed at night by the same
assassin, then assuming the name of Lagnier, though his name had formerly been Rigaud; how the
assassin had proposed that they should join their fortunes together; how he held the
assassin in such dread and aversion that he had fled from him at daylight, and how he had ever since been haunted by the fear of seeing the
assassin again and being claimed by him as an acquaintance.
"The
assassin must have entered by the window!" I cried;--"I will go to the window!" and I rushed from the pavilion and ran like one out of his mind.
The old man sat awhile plunged in thought; then he looked up with a satisfied light in his eye, and said: "That this
assassin should have put the affront upon me of letting me meet him on the field of honor as if he were a gentleman is a matter which I will presently settle--but not now.
d'Herblay," continued Fouquet, "had been an
assassin, he had no occasion to inform me of his plan in order to succeed.
"Any delay in arresting the
assassin," I observed, "might give him time to perpetrate some fresh atrocity."
But if ye still keep silence, if through fear For self or friends ye disregard my hest, Hear what I then resolve; I lay my ban On the
assassin whosoe'er he be.
