"When one is at the point of death," she said to herself, "one has the right to protest before God against the iniquity of his executioners." At that moment there was an extraordinary power of reaction in that woman, naturally so gentle and submissive. It was like the sudden boiling of a placid lake, caused by a volcanic disturbance, or like the blazing up of a flame just on the point of dying. She was feverish, she was no longer herself. She saw Monsieur Antoine approaching with Marcel, and she mechanically seated herself, to receive him, on the bench where, three months earlier, the old man had made the strange and absurd proposition, her rejection of which had cost her so dear. As on that day, she heard the foliage rustle and saw the sparrow Julien had tamed flapping his wings and apparently hesitating whether he should light on her shoulder. The little creature had taken a liking to freedom. Julien, being unable to find him as they were going away, had left him behind, hoping that Julie, whose long absence he did not foresee, would be very glad to find him there. Since her return, Julie had seen him several times not far away, friendly but suspicious. She had tried in vain to induce him to come nearer. But this time he allowed himself to be caught. She was holding him in her hands when Monsieur Antoine accosted her. She smiled and saluted him with a bewildered air; he spoke to her, unconscious of what he was saying, for his long exercise of absolutely despotic power had failed to overcome his timidity at the beginning of an interview. After his inevitable moment of stammering, he could succeed in saying nothing more than this: "Ah! so you still have your sparrow?" "It is Julien's sparrow and I love it," replied Julie. "Here, do you want to kill it? Here it is!" Her manner of speaking, her livid pallor, and the savagely indifferent air with which she offered him the poor little bird, all warm with her kisses, made a profound impression on Monsieur Antoine. He looked at Marcel as if to say: "Is she mad, I wonder?" and instead of twisting the sparrow's neck as he would have done three months earlier, he pushed it away, saying stupidly: "Psha! psha! keep the thing! There's no great harm in it!" "You are so kind!" rejoined Julie, with the same feverish bitterness. "You have come to receive my thanks, haven't you? You know that I accept everything, that I am happy now, that I no longer love anything or anybody, that you have done me the very greatest service, and that you can say to God every night: 'I have been good and great like unto Thee!'" Monsieur Antoine stood with his mouth open, uncertain whether Madame d'Estrelle said these things to make sport of him or to thank him; too cunning to trust, too dull to understand. "She is going to fly in my face," he whispered to Marcel. "You deceived me, you rascal!"