“Where is he, that honest man?” he shouted suddenly in stentorian tones which not only caused Catherine to raise her hands, but frightened himself, and he dropped at once to a mere forcible utterance. “Where is that man? Let me see him.” Even Catherine’s hieratic composure was disturbed. “Why?” she said, looking really disconcerted, “he will be down here directly. This bowl of coffee is for him.” Peyrol made as if to leave the kitchen, but Catherine stopped him. “For God’s sake, Monsieur Peyrol,” she said, half in entreaty and half in command, “don’t wake up the child. Let her sleep. Oh, let her sleep! Don’t wake her up. God only knows how long it is since she has slept properly. I could not tell you. I daren’t think of it.” She was shocked by hearing Peyrol declare: “All this is confounded nonsense.” But he sat down again, seemed to catch sight of the coffee bowl and emptied what was left in it down his throat. “I don’t want her on my hands more crazy than she has been before,” said Catherine in a sort of exasperation but in a very low tone. This phrase in its selfish form expressed a real and profound compassion for her niece. She dreaded the moment when that fatal Arlette would wake up and the dreadful complications of life which her slumbers had suspended would have to be picked up again. Peyrol fidgeted on his seat. “And so he told you he was going? He actually did tell you that?” he asked. “He promised to go before the child wakes up.... At once.” “But, sacré nom d’un chien, there is never any wind before eleven o’clock,” Peyrol exclaimed in a tone of profound annoyance, yet trying to moderate his voice, while Catherine, indulgent to his changing moods, only compressed her lips and nodded at him soothingly. “It is impossible to work with people like that,” he mumbled. “Do you know, Monsieur Peyrol, that she has been to see the priest?” Catherine was heard suddenly towering above her end of the table. The two women had had a talk before Arlette had been induced by her aunt to lie down. Peyrol gave a start. “What? Priest?... Now look here, Catherine,” he went on with repressed ferocity, “do you imagine that all this interests me in the least?” “I can think of nothing but that niece of mine. We two have nobody but each other in the world,” she went on, reproducing the very phrase Arlette had used to Réal. She seemed to be thinking aloud, but noticed that Peyrol was listening with attention. “He wanted to shut her up from everybody,” and the old woman clasped her meagre hands with a sudden gesture. “I suppose there are still some convents about the world.”