‘How he bores one with his proprieties!’ said Védrine, seeing the face Paul had not been able to help making. ‘It really is very odd,’ murmured the young fellow in a vague and wandering voice. So it would be he, and not the other fellow, whose pale, bloodstained face would be seen by the doctors side through the window of the brougham as it went slowly home. Well, he had made a mess of it! Suddenly he sat up, in spite of the doctor’s protest, rummaged in his card-case for a card, and scribbled on it with pencil in a shaky hand, ‘Fate is as faithless as man. I wanted to avenge you, but could not. Forgive me.’ He signed his name, read it over, reflected, read it again, then fastened up the envelope, which they had found in a dusty drawer, a nasty scented envelope from some rural stores, and directed it to the Duchess Padovani. He gave it to Freydet, begging him to deliver it himself as soon as possible. ‘It shall be there within an hour, my dear Paul.’ He made with his hand a sign of thanks and dismissal, then stretched himself out, shut his eyes, and lay quiet and still till the departure, listening to the sound which came from the sunny meadow around--a vast shrill hum of insects, which imitated the pulsation of approaching fever. Beneath the closed lids his thoughts pursued the windings of this second and quite novel plot, conceived by a sudden inspiration on ‘the place of defeat. Was it a sudden inspiration? There perhaps the ambitious young man was wrong; for the spring of our actions is often unseen, lost and hidden amid the internal disturbance of the crisis, even as the agitator who starts a crowd himself disappears in it. A human being resembles a crowd; both are manifold, complicated things, full of confused and irregular impulses, but there is an agitator in the background; and the movements of a man, like those of a mob, passionate and spontaneous as they may appear, have always been preconcerted. Since the evening when on the terrace of the Hôtel Padovani Lavaux had suggested the Duchess to the young Guardsman, the thought had occurred to Paul that, if Madame de Rosen failed him, he might fall back on the fair Antonia. It had recurred two nights ago at the Français, when he saw Adriani in the Duchess’s box; but it took no definite shape, because all his energy was then turned in another direction, and he still believed in the possibility of success. Now that the game was completely lost, his first idea on returning to life was ‘the Duchess.’ Thus, although he scarcely knew it, the resolution reached so abruptly was but the coming to light of what grew slowly underground. ‘I wanted to avenge you, but could not.’ Warm-hearted, impulsive, and revengeful as he knew her to be, ‘Mari’ Anto,’ as her Corsicans called her, would certainly be at his bedside the next morning. It would be his business to see that she did not go away.