"The train flew through the tunnel, which is very long. It takes three minutes to reach the end, as you know. To me it seemed like an hour. The President had ceased talking, in consequence of the deafening clatter of clashing iron. And my husband at this last moment must have lost courage, for he still remained motionless. Only, in the dancing light of the lamp, I noticed his ears become violet. Was he going to wait until we were again in the open country? The crime seemed to me so fatally inevitable, that, henceforth, I had but one desire: to be no longer subjected to this torture of waiting, to have it all over. Why on earth did he not kill him, as the thing had to be done? I would have taken the knife and settled the matter myself, I was so exasperated with fear and suffering. He looked at me. No doubt he read my thoughts on my face. For all of a sudden, he fell upon the President, who had turned to glance through the glass at the door, grasping him by the shoulders. "M. Grandmorin, in a scare, instinctively shook himself free, and stretched out his arm towards the alarm knob just above his head. He managed to graze it, but was seized again by my husband, and thrown down on the seat with such violence that he found himself doubled up. His open mouth uttered frantic yells, in stupefaction and terror, which were drowned in the uproar of the train; while I heard my husband distinctly repeating the word: Beast! beast! beast! in a passionate hiss. But the noise subsided, the train left the tunnel, the pale country appeared once more with the dark trees filing past. I had remained stiffened in my corner, pressing against the back of the coupé as far off as possible. "How long did the struggle last? Barely a few seconds. And yet it seemed to me it would never end, that all the passengers were now listening to the cries, that the trees saw us. My husband, holding the open knife in his hand, could not strike the blow, being driven back, staggering on the floor of the carriage, by the kicks of his victim. He almost fell to his knees; and the train flew on, carrying us along full speed; while the locomotive whistled as we approached the level-crossing at La Croix-de-Maufras. "Without me being able to recall afterwards how the thing occurred, I know it was then that I threw myself on the legs of the struggling man. Yes, I let myself fall like a bundle, crushing his two lower limbs with all my weight, so that he was unable to move them any more. And if I saw nothing, I felt it all: the shock of the knife in the throat, the long quivering of the body, and then death, which came with three hiccups, with a sound like the running-down of a broken clock. Oh! that quivering fit of agony! I still feel the echo of it in my limbs!" Jacques, eager for details, wanted to interrupt her with questions. But she was now in a hurry to finish.