Then Jacques had a desire to see the wound, while he was alone. But he hesitated, in the anxiety that if he touched the head, it would, perhaps, be noticed. He reckoned that Misard could not be back with the station-master before three-quarters of an hour; and as the minutes passed, he thought of this Misard, of this puny fellow, so slow, so calm, who also dared, who was killing as tranquilly as possible, with doses of poison. Then it was easy enough to kill? Everybody killed. He drew nearer the corpse, and the idea of looking at the wound stung him so sharply that he was burning all over. He wanted to see how it had been done, and what had run from it, to see the red hole! By carefully putting the head back into its position, nobody would know anything about it. But at the bottom of his hesitation was another fear which he had not owned, the dread of blood. He had still a quarter of an hour to himself, and he was on the point of making up his mind to look, when a slight sound beside him, made him start. It was Flore, standing gazing at the corpse like himself. She was keen on accidents; as soon as ever the news arrived that an animal had been pounded to atoms, or a man cut in two by a train, she hurried to the scene of disaster. She had just dressed again, and wanted to see the corpse. Unlike Jacques, she did not hesitate. After a first glance, she stooped down, raising the lantern with one hand, while with the other she took the head, and threw it back. "Mind what you're doing," murmured Jacques; "it's forbidden." But she shrugged her shoulders. The face appeared in the yellow light, the face of an old man, with a large nose and the blue, wide-open eyes of one formerly fair. A frightful wound was gaping beneath the chin. The throat had been cut with a deep, jagged gash, as if the knife had been twisted round probing it. The right side of the chest was drenched in blood. On the left, in the button-hole of the great coat, the rosette of Commander of the Legion of Honour looked like a clot of blood that had spurted there. Flore uttered an exclamation of surprise. "Hullo! the old man!" said she. Jacques advanced, bending forward as she was doing, mingling his hair with her hair, to see better. He was choking, gorging himself with the sight. Unconsciously he repeated: "The old man? The old man?" "Yes, old Grandmorin, the President." For another moment she examined this livid face, with the distorted mouth and the great, terrifying eyes. Then she let go the head, which was beginning to turn icy cold in cadaverous rigidity, and the wound closed. "He's done larking with the girls!" she resumed in a lower tone. "It's got something to do with one of them, for sure. Ah! my poor Louisette! Ah! the pig! Serve him right!"