Really I am not suspected of sympathy for the audacious woman whose abominable coquetry had exasperated the poor actress to the extent of this astounding insult. But I must do her the justice to admit that she had really a majestic way of thus bringing to naught Camille’s justice. I distinctly heard her voice pronounce the phrase in spite of the hum of conversation and the noise of the moving of chairs and couches, and I saw Camille look at her with a somnambulist’s look, and also give her arm to Jacques in quite a passive and subdued way. Her astonishment at daring what she had dared and at nothing happening had left her incapable of reply, feeling or thought. She was like a murderess who had fired at her victim and seen the bullet rebound from his forehead, without even inflicting a scratch. She had not, nor had I, a mind sufficiently disengaged to perceive in what had taken place a proof among a thousand that an irreducible difference separates the life presented upon the stage from the life which is really lived. She was the victim of an attack of nerves which first showed itself in this astonishment, or rather bewilderment, and almost immediately afterwards by a fit of half convulsive laughter which wounded me severely. I gladly left the spot where she was with Jacques surrounded by men who knew her and were paying her compliments. I came across Bonnivet directly. His forehead was red, its veins swollen, his eyes were clear and at the same time flaming, and these things with the tremors through his whole body suddenly caused the fear I had felt a few minutes before to return to me. Even if to the rest of the audience the insult hurled in the fashionable lady’s face by the actress had passed unnoticed, a circumstance which was explained by the fact that they had no notion of Jacques’ position between his two mistresses, the husband himself had perceived this insult, and it required all his self-control to swallow the affront as he had done. He listened, or pretended to listen, to Senneterre, whose volubility showed that he, too, had understood the significance of the scene acted by Camille, and that he was trembling with fear lest Bonnivet also understood. The husband was automatically curling his moustache with his right hand, while I felt sure he was digging the nails of his left, which was hidden, into his chest.