What followed came suddenly and unexpectedly, like a thunder-clap. In three bounds, Lupin rushed into the drawing-room, sprang upon the young man, flung him to the ground and, with one hand on his rival's chest, beside himself with anger, turning to Mrs. Kesselbach, he cried: "But don't you know? Hasn't he told you, the cheat? . . . And you love him, you love that! Does he look like a grand-duke? Oh, what a joke!" He grinned and chuckled like a madman, while Dolores gazed at him in stupefaction: "He, a grand-duke! Hermann IV., Grand-duke of Zweibrucken-Veldenz! A reigning sovereign! Elector of Treves! But it's enough to make one die of laughing! He! Why, his name is Baupré, Gérard Baupré, the lowest of ragamuffins . . . a beggar, whom I picked up in the gutter! . . . A grand-duke? But it's I who made him a grand-duke! Ha, ha, ha, what a joke! . . . If you had seen him cut his little finger . . . he fainted three times . . . the milksop! . . . Ah, you allow yourself to lift your eyes to ladies . . . and to rebel against the master! . . . Wait a bit, Grand-duke of Zweibrucken-Veldenz, I'll show you!" He took him in his arms, like a bundle, swung him to and fro for a moment and pitched him through the open window: "Mind the rose trees, grand-duke! There are thorns!" When he turned round, Dolores was close to him and looking at him with eyes which he had never seen in her before, the eyes of a woman who hates and who is incensed with rage. Could this possibly be Dolores, the weak, ailing Dolores? She stammered: "What are you doing? . . . How dare you? . . . And he. . . . Then it's true? . . . lied to me? . . ." "Lied to you?" cried Lupin, grasping the humiliation which she had suffered as a woman. "Lied to you? He, a grand-duke! A puppet, that's all, a puppet of which I pulled the string . . . an instrument which I tuned, to play upon as I chose! Oh, the fool, the fool!" Overcome with renewed rage, he stamped his foot and shook his fist at the open window. And he began to walk up and down the room, flinging out phrases in which all the pent-up violence of his secret thought burst forth: