“Not a word, daroga, or I shall blow everything up.” And he added, “The honor rests with mademoiselle.⁠ ⁠… Mademoiselle has not touched the scorpion”⁠—how deliberately he spoke!⁠—“mademoiselle has not touched the grasshopper”⁠—with that composure!⁠—“but it is not too late to do the right thing. There, I open the caskets without a key, for I am a trapdoor lover and I open and shut what I please and as I please. I open the little ebony caskets: mademoiselle, look at the little dears inside. Aren’t they pretty? If you turn the grasshopper, mademoiselle, we shall all be blown up. There is enough gunpowder under our feet to blow up a whole quarter of Paris. If you turn the scorpion, mademoiselle, all that powder will be soaked and drowned. Mademoiselle, to celebrate our wedding, you shall make a very handsome present to a few hundred Parisians who are at this moment applauding a poor masterpiece of Meyerbeer’s⁠ ⁠… you shall make them a present of their lives.⁠ ⁠… For, with your own fair hands, you shall turn the scorpion.⁠ ⁠… And merrily, merrily, we will be married!”

A pause; and then: