“Ah! the scene from _Adrienne_!” I cried. “Are you thinking of that to try and quiet your remorse instead of shedding every tear in your body over the moral assassination you have committed. Let us talk of that evening! What painful consequences can it have which you can put in the scale to counterbalance a ruined future and a poor soul defiled forever? Has Bonnivet turned his wife out? Has he sent his seconds to you? No, I answer myself, and I will save you the trouble of comparing the bad five minutes you passed and deserved with the vertigo which has just seized and destroyed this poor girl for the whole of her life; I repeat, and you shall hear, for the whole of her life.” “What heat!” he replied with an ironical smile. “What eloquence! We are engaged in telling the beautiful truth. Come, you are angry with yourself for not having the courage to put yourself forward in Tournade’s place. That is the truth, no denials, please. I know the cause of it, poor La Croix. Hard words are useless between us, you know that, so let us change our subject of conversation, shall we?” Then after a short silence he continued: “I am not annoyed with you, and I am going to prove it by asking you to do me a service. Guess whence I have just come?” “From the house of that hussy, Madam de Bonnivet, naturally,” I replied. I was quite determined to end the interview with a quarrel, and I had used the phrase which I thought most likely to bring that about quickly. My anger changed into stupor at hearing him reply to me with a chuckle— “Yes, with that hussy, Madam de Bonnivet. You hate her very much, do you not? You think I am very infamous to sacrifice Camille for her, don’t you? Ah, well!” he went on in a singularly bitter tone which made me realize that something very new and unexpected had taken place in that quarter, “I have come to ask you to aid me in my revenge. That surprises you, does it not?” “Confess that there is a reason,” I answered him. “I left you at eleven o’clock last evening, only thinking of her and indignant with Camille on her account. Then you treated as a dirty trick the foolish prank of that poor child because she——”