"Here is what you ought to do, Mademoiselle Célestine. You ought to lodge with the prosecuting attorney at Louviers a complaint against Lanlaire for outrages on morals and an assault on modesty. Ah! that's an idea!" "But, captain, Monsieur has never outraged my morals or assaulted my modesty." "Well, what difference does that make?" "I cannot." "What! you cannot? But there is nothing simpler. Lodge your complaint, and summon Rose and me. We will come to declare, to certify in a court of justice, that we have seen everything, everything, everything. A soldier's word amounts to something, especially just now, thunder of God! And remember that, after that, it will be easy to rake up the case of little Claire, and involve Lanlaire in it. Ah! that's an idea! Think it over, Mademoiselle Célestine; think it over." Ah! I have many things, much too many things, to think over just now. Joseph is pressing me for a decision; the matter cannot be postponed. He has heard from Cherbourg that the little café is to be sold next week. But I am anxious, troubled. I want to, and I don't want to. One day the idea pleases me, and the next it doesn't. I really believe that I am afraid that Joseph wants to drag me into terrible things. I cannot come to a decision. He is not brutal in his method of persuasion; he advances arguments, and tempts me with promises of liberty, of handsome costumes, of secure, happy, triumphant life. "But I must buy the little café," he says to me. "I cannot let such an opportunity go by. And if the Revolution comes? Think of it, Célestine; that means fortune right away. And who knows? The Revolution--ah! bear that in mind--is the best thing possible for the cafés." "Buy it, at any rate. If it is not I, it will be somebody else." "No, no, it must be you. Nobody else will do. I am crazy over you. But you distrust me." "No, Joseph, I assure you." "Yes, yes; you have bad ideas about me." I do not know, no, really, I do not know, where, at that moment, I found the courage to ask him: "Well, Joseph, tell me that it was you who outraged the little Claire in the woods." Joseph received the shock with extraordinary tranquillity. He simply shrugged his shoulders, swayed back and forth a few seconds, and then, giving a hitch to his pantaloons, which had slipped a little, he answered, simply: "You see? Did I not tell you so? I know your thoughts; I know everything that goes on in your mind." His voice was softer, but his look had become so terrifying that it was impossible for me to articulate a word. "It is not a question of the little Claire; it is a question of you." He took me in his arms, as he did the other evening. "Will you come with me to the little café?" Shuddering and trembling, I found strength to answer: "I am afraid; I am afraid of you, Joseph. Why am I afraid of you?" He held me cradled in his arms. And, disdaining to justify himself, happy perhaps at increasing my terrors, he said to me, in a paternal tone: