He rose, and, grasping his friend by the shoulder, he began to shake him in a fury of rage, repeating:-- "You admit it! You admit it! You knew that I loved her, and yet you said nothing. For an entire week you have been with me, been near me, you have seen me giving all my heart, all that is good in me, all that is tender and affectionate to your former mistress, and you said nothing! And if I had not learned from your wife you would have let me sink deeper and deeper in this passion every day, you would have left me in the toils of some one you despise!--It was at the beginning you ought to have said, 'She is a monster!'--not now." "How could I?" said Olivier, interrupting. "Honor forbade it. You know that very well." "But honor did not forbid you writing to her," replied Pierre, "when you knew that I loved her, to ask her for a meeting unknown to me; it did not prevent you going to her house, when you knew I was not there." He looked at Olivier with an expression in which shone a veritable hatred. "I see clearly now," he went on. "You have both been playing with me.--You wanted to use what you had discovered to enter into her life again. Judas! You have lied to me.--Traitor! Traitor! Traitor!" With the cry of some stricken animal, he sank into a chair and began to weep passionately, uttering among his sobs:-- "Friendship, love; love, friendship, all is dead. I have lost all. Every one has lied to me, everything has betrayed me.--Ah! how miserable I am!--" Du Prat recoiled, paling under the influence of this flood of invective. The pain caused by his friend's insult was deep enough. But there was no anger, no question of egoism in his feelings. The terrible injustice of a being naturally good, delicate, and tender only increased his pity. At the same time the sentiment of the irremediable rupture of their affections, if the interview finished like this, restored a little of the sangfroid that the other had quite lost. With a voice that was full of emotion in its gravity, he replied:--