“Her object was to take me from Camille,” he interrupted. “That I have always known. Now that she has succeeded I no longer interest her, which is quite natural. The spite of outraged self-conceit has done the rest. For a few minutes I represented Camille to her and she detested me with the hatred she bears her. That is also very natural. She has found a means of satisfying everything at once: her caution concerning her husband’s suspicions, which were now very much aroused; her ferocious hate, and without doubt her natural fund of brutality by that unlikely rupture. But I am not turned out just like that. I have a revenge to take, and I will take it. You will aid me, and at once.” “I?” I replied; “how?” “By going at once to Camille,” he told me, and as I made a gesture he insisted: “Yes, to Camille. There is a first night at the Théâtre Français for which I have a box. I wish to attend the performance with her _tête-à-tête_, do you understand? Madam de Bonnivet will be there. I want the wretch to see me with little Favier, and I want her to realize that we are reconciled and happy, for that will wound her self-conceit. It is the only place where I can attack her. Ah! she is convinced that I left her house in tears with my heart torn, and that I am miserable! She will have before her fine guinea fowl eyes the proof that she will no longer be of any more account in our lives, Camille’s and mine, than that,” and he threw down a match with which he had just lit his cigarette; “and she will have to say to herself: 'All the same, this man has had me.’ For I have had her; she cannot alter the fact that she has been my mistress. What a revenge it is even to think that a woman can never efface that!” This horrible explosion of evil sentiments had made the face of Jacques, who not without reason passed as a handsome man, and who could make himself so feline, so gentle, and so caressing, quite sinister. He was hideous at this moment when he was justifying in a striking way the theories of poor Claude upon the savage hatred which is at the root of sexual intercourse. This so-called love, which has cruelty for its root, has always been so repulsive to me that it was impossible for me to pity Jacques, although I felt that he was as unhappy as it was possible for him to be. Besides, I could clearly see the absolute uselessness of the mission which the discarded lover wished me to undertake. Madam de Bonnivet’s character became quite clear to me. I realized that even with his subtle pretensions to trickery my companion had been in the hands of this woman what the most corrupt of writers would always be in the hands of a really wicked creature who did not dally with depravity. A child, a poor, little swaggering imp of vice immediately unmasked and bound.