He turned icy cold with terror. He asked himself what he could be thinking of, to loiter thus in this room. He had killed, he was gorged, satiated, intoxicated with the dreadful wine of crime. Stumbling against the knife which had remained on the ground, he fled, rolling down the stairs. He opened the front door giving on the perron, as if the small one would not have been sufficiently wide, and dashed out into the pitch-dark night where his furious gallop became lost. He never turned round. The dubious-looking house, set down aslant at the edge of the line, remained open and desolate behind him, in its abandonment of death. Cabuche, that night as on the others, had found his way through the hedge, and was prowling under the window of Séverine. He knew very well that Roubaud was expected, and was not astonished at the light filtering through a chink in one of the shutters. But this man bounding from the top of the steps, this frantic gallop like that of an animal tearing away into the country, struck him dumbfounded with surprise. It was already too late to pursue the fugitive, and the quarryman remained bewildered, full of uneasiness and hesitation before the open door, gaping upon the black hole formed by the vestibule. What had occurred? Should he enter? The heavy silence, the absolute stillness while the lamp continued burning in the upper room, gave him pangs of anguish. At last, making up his mind, he groped his way upstairs. Before the door of the red bedroom, which had also been left open, he stopped. In the placid light, he seemed to perceive in the distance a heap of petticoats lying at the foot of the bedstead. No doubt Séverine was undressed. He called gently to her, feeling alarmed, while his veins began throbbing violently. Then he caught sight of the blood, and understood. With a terrible cry that came from his lacerated heart, he sprang forward. Great God! It was she, assassinated, struck down there in her pitiful nudity. He thought her still rattling, and felt such despair, such painful shame at seeing her quite nude in her agony; that he lifted her in a fraternal transport, in his open arms, and, placing her on the bed, drew the sheet over her. But in this clasp, the only tenderness between them, he covered his chest and both his hands with blood. He was streaming with her gore; and at this moment he saw that Roubaud and Misard were there. Finding all the doors open, they also had just decided to come upstairs. The husband arrived late, having stopped to talk with the gatekeeper, who had then accompanied him, continuing the conversation on the way. Both, in stupefaction, turned their eyes on Cabuche, whose hands were dripping with blood like those of a butcher. "The same stroke as for the President," said Misard at last, while he examined the wound.