Jacques no longer had any doubt that he was cured of his frightful hereditary complaint, for since he had known Séverine he had never been troubled by thoughts of murder. Occasionally he suddenly remembered what she had done--that assassination, avowed by her eyes alone, on the bench in the Batignolles Square; but he had no inclination to learn the details. She, on the contrary, seemed more and more tormented by the desire to reveal everything. At times he felt her bursting with her secret; and, in anxiety, he would at once close her mouth with a kiss, sealing up the avowal. Why place this stranger between them? Could they affirm that it would not interfere with their happiness? He suspected danger, and felt his old shiver return at the bare idea of raking up this sanguinary story. And she, no doubt, guessed his thoughts. Roubaud, since the summer, had grown stouter, and in proportion as his wife recovered her gaiety and the bloom of her twenty years, he grew older and seemed more overcast. In four months he had greatly changed, as she often said. He continued to cordially grasp the hand of Jacques, inviting him to the lodging, never happy but when he had him at his table. Only this diversion no longer sufficed. He frequently took himself off as soon as he had swallowed the last mouthful, sometimes leaving his comrade with his wife, pretending he was stifling, and required fresh air. The truth was that he now frequented a small café on the Cours Napoléon, where he met M. Cauche, the commissary of police attached to the station. He drank but little, merely a few small glasses of rum; but he had acquired a taste for gambling, which was turning to a passion. He only recovered energy, and forgot the past, when the cards were in his hand, and he found himself engrossed in an interminable series of games at piquet. M. Cauche, a frightful gambler, had suggested having something on the game, and they had made the stake five francs. From that moment, Roubaud, astonished not to have found himself out before, was burning with a thirst for gain, with that scorching fever brought on by money won which ravages a man to the point of making him stake his position, even his life, on a throw of the dice. So far his work had not suffered. He escaped as soon as free, returning home at three or four o'clock in the morning, on nights when he was off duty. His wife never complained. She only reproached him with coming back more sullen than before; for he was pursued by extraordinary bad luck, and ultimately got into debt.