At the other extremity of the hall there was a single table unoccupied, at which Hubert placed himself. From here he was able, not, indeed, to hear the conversation of the three guests--the noise in the restaurant was too loud for that--but to study the physiognomy of the man whom he detested. He ordered his own meal at random, and sank into a kind of analysis known to those observers from taste or by profession, who will enter a theatre, a smoking-room, or a railway carriage with the sole desire of observing the workings of human physiology, and of tracing the instinctive manifestations of temperament in gesture, look, sound of breathing, or posture. It sometimes happened, indeed, that a raising of the voice would cause a fragmentary sentence to reach Hubert; but he paid no heed to it, sunk as he was in the contemplation of the man himself, whom he saw almost in front of him, with his bold eyes, his rather short neck, and his strong jaws. When La Croix-Firmin had entered, his complexion had looked worn and pimply; but when breakfast was half over the work of digestion began to send an influx of blood into his face. He ate much and steadily, with potent slowness. He laughed loudly. His hands, holding his knife and fork, were strong, and displayed two rings. His forehead, which was shown in all its narrowness by his short curls, could never have been lit up by a flame of thought. All this formed a whole which, even in Hubert's hostile eyes, was not devoid of a manly, healthy beauty; but it was the brutish beauty of a being of flesh and blood, as to whom it was impossible for a person of refinement to entertain an illusion for an hour. To say of a woman that she had given herself to this man was to say that she had yielded to an instinct of a wholly physical order. The more Hubert identified himself by observation with this temperament, the clearer did this become to him. He was interpreting Theresa's nature better at this moment than he had ever done before. He grasped its ambiguousness with frightful certainty, and it was then that there rose up within him the saddest, but at the same time the noblest, feeling that he had entertained since his accident, the only one truly worthy of what his soul had formerly been, that one which, in the presence of woman's perfidy, is man's preservation from complete ruin of heart:--pity. An emotion of infinite bitterness and melancholy combined came upon him at the thought that the charming creature whom he had known, his dear silent one, as he used to call her, she who had shown herself possessed of such delicate refinement in the art of pleasing him, should have surrendered herself to the caresses of this man.