Yes, it was indeed the husband of Molan’s mistress, no longer in his laughable function as the shy and intimidated husband of a woman of the world who endured the coquetry of the woman who bore his name, submitting to it to profit by it. It was the assassin in his hiding-place, the assassin in whom jealousy had suddenly awakened the primitive male, the murderous brute, and whose eyes, nostrils, mouth announced his desire to kill whatever happened. He was there scanning the street with savage glances. The half turned-up otter-skin collar of his overcoat gave to his red hair and high colour a more sinister look, and the bare ungloved hand with which he lifted the curtain of the window to enable him to see better seemed ready to grasp the weapon which should avenge his honour at once on that pavement, without any more thought of the world and of scandal than if Paris were still the primeval forest of 3,000 years before, where prehistoric men fought with stone axes for possession of a female clad in skins. How had the jealous husband discovered the retreat where Queen Anne and Jacques took shelter during their brief intrigue? Neither Camille, I, nor Jacques himself have ever known. An anonymous letter had informed him; but by whom was it written? Molan had at his heels a mob of the envious; Madam de Bonnivet was in the same position, even without reckoning her more or less disappointed suitors. Perhaps Bonnivet had simply recourse to the vulgar but sure method of espionage. It is quite certain that the porter had been questioned, and but for the fact that he was a good fellow, who had been well supplied with theatre tickets by his lodger, and was proud of the latter’s fame as an author, the rooms which had seen the poor Blue Duchess so happy and so miserable in turn without doubt would have served as the theatre for a sanguinary dénouement. It was indeed the desire for a tragic vengeance which Camille Favier saw upon the face, in the nostrils, around the mouth, and in the eyes of the man’s face she had seen at the carriage window in the dim light furnished by a gas jet in the darkness, looking for a proof of his dishonour, and decided upon immediate vengeance. It is very likely, too, that he had noticed the young woman. But he had only met her once off the stage, and the high collar of her coat, a fur boa wound several times round her neck, a hat worn over her eyes and a double veil made Camille into an indecisive figure, a vague and indistinctive silhouette. Bonnivet without doubt saw in her, if his fixed plan allowed him to reason at all, a wanderer of the prostitute class exercising her miserable trade as the darkness came on. Then he took no further notice of her.