"You could say that," said Eliza. "He was strolling in the gardens of Versailles late in the summer. There is a place there called the Bosquet de l’Encelade—a pool and a fountain of several jets, depressed in the center of a great encircling bower, the whole surrounded by woods, and rather remote from the château. I used to read there. As de Gex was strolling along the circuit of the bower, he became aware—or so he told the story later—that someone else was there, padding along in the same direction, but lagging far enough behind as to remain hidden from view by the curvature of the bower. And so de Gex stepped through one of the portals that gives access to the lawn within—terraced rings of turf descending toward the pool. Cutting across the lawn, he turned around abruptly to look behind him, and saw what was recognizable as a human form. But it was difficult to make out through the lattice-work of the bower. ‘Show yourself, whoever you are,’ de Gex called, and after a brief hesitation his stalker emerged from one of those portals and was revealed as an immense one-armed man carrying a long staff—which proved, on second glance, to be a harpoon. Now, the fountain lay between them, and de Gex wanted to keep it that way, whereas this other chap wanted to get closer to de Gex, so that he could launch the weapon from shorter range and without having to pitch it through jets and spray. De Gex called for help, but in this secluded part of the garden, with the roar and hiss of the fountain, he could not know whether his cry had been heard. The harpooneer took to pursuing him. De Gex was uncertain whether to keep circling the fountain—which had the advantage that it kept his adversary in view—or to exit through the bower, flee into the grove, and go for help. In any event he did not have to dither over it for long, for as it turned out someone had heard his cry and come running to see what was the matter. De Gex took his eye off the harpooneer for a moment as his would-be rescuer emerged from the bower. When he looked back he saw the harpoon inbound; for his hunter, seeing that he was losing his chance, had made a desperate fling. De Gex tried to dodge it. Meanwhile it was diverted by a surging jet from a fountain. The details are unclear; suffice it to say that the fluked head of the weapon had to be excavated, by the King’s surgeon, from deep in de Gex’s upper thigh. It passed through the muscle on the outside of the limb and spared the great vessels and nerves that run along the inside; but the bone was damaged, an infection developed, and de Gex has, ever since, lingered at Death’s door, in a sick-room at the chapter-house of the Jesuits in the town of Versailles."