"My fate," she said to herself, "depends on what he will think when he listens to me. It may be I shall never get another opportunity of speaking to him after this fatal quarter of an hour. He is not a reasonable person who is governed by his intellect. In that case, with the help of my weak intelligence, I could anticipate what he will do or say. He will decide our common fate. He has the power. But this fate depends on my adroitness, on my skill in directing the ideas of this crank, who is blinded by his rage and unable to see half of what takes place. Great God! I need talent and coolness, where shall I get it?" She regained her calmness as though by magic, and she entered the garden and saw her husband in the distance. His dishevelled hair and disordered dress showed that he had not slept. She gave him a letter with a broken seal but folded. As for him, without opening it, he gazed at his wife with the eyes of a madman. "Here's an abominable thing," she said to him, "which an evil-looking man who makes out that he knows you and is under an obligation to you, handed to me as I was passing behind the notary's garden. I insist on one thing and that is that you send back this M. Julien to his parents and without delay." Madame de Rênal hastened to say these words, perhaps a little before the psychological moment, in order to free herself from the awful prospect of having to say them. She was seized with joy on seeing that which she was occasioning to her husband. She realised from the fixed stare which he was rivetting on her that Julien had surmised rightly. "What a genius he is to be so brilliantly diplomatic instead of succumbing to so real a misfortune," she thought. "He will go very far in the future! Alas, his successes will only make him forget me." This little act of admiration for the man whom she adored quite cured her of her trouble. She congratulated herself on her tactics. "I have not been unworthy of Julien," she said to herself with a sweet and secret pleasure. M. de Rênal kept examining the second anonymous letter which the reader may remember was composed of printed words glued on to a paper verging on blue. He did not say a word for fear of giving himself away. "They still make fun of me in every possible way," said M. de Rênal to himself, overwhelmed with exhaustion. "Still more new insults to examine and all the time on account of my wife." He was on the point of heaping on her the coarsest insults. He was barely checked by the prospects of the Besançon legacy. Consumed by the need of venting his feelings on something, he crumpled up the paper of the second anonymous letter and began to walk about with huge strides. He needed to get away from his wife. A few moments afterwards he came back to her in a quieter frame of mind.