"But this is madness!" he cried. "We can't go off together. You are going crazy--" "Perhaps so. At all events it's you and your father who are making me so. I need you and I take you. So much the worse for fools!" Red gleams shone in her eyes. Again approaching Maxime and scorching his face with her breath, she continued: "What would become of me if you married the hunchback? You would deride me, and I should perhaps be forced to take back that big simpleton De Mussy, who would not even warm my feet--When people have done what we have done they remain together. Besides, it's clear enough, I feel bored when you are not there, and as I'm going off, I take you with me. You can tell Céleste what you want her to go and fetch at your place." The unfortunate fellow held out his hands and supplicated. "Come, my little Renée, don't commit such folly. Become yourself again. Think a little of the scandal." "I don't care a fig for the scandal! If you refuse, I shall go down into the drawing-room and cry out that I have slept with you, and that you are now cowardly enough to want to marry the hunchback." He bowed his head and listened to her, already giving way, and accepting this will so roughly imposed upon him. "We will go to Havre," she resumed in a lower tone, caressing her dream, "and from there we can reach England. No one will bother us any more. If we are not far enough off, we will start for America. I, who always feel cold, I shall be comfortable there. I have often envied creoles." But while she enlarged the scope of her project, terror again seized hold of Maxime. To leave Paris, to go so far away with this woman who was certainly mad, to leave behind him a story the shameful character of which would exile him for ever! it was like some atrocious nightmare stifling him. He sought in despair for a means of escaping from this dressing-room, this pink retreat where the bell of the lunatic asylum of Charenton seemed to toll. At last he thought he had found an expedient. "But I have no money," he said gently, so as not to exasperate her. "If you shut me up I cannot procure any." "I have some money, though," she replied with an air of triumph. "I have a hundred thousand francs. Everything tallies perfectly well--" She took out of the wardrobe the deed of cession which her husband had left with her in the vague hope that she might change her mind. She laid it on the toilet table, compelled Maxime to give her a pen and an inkstand which were in the bedroom, and pushing back the soap, and signing the act: "There," she said, "the folly's done. If I'm robbed it is because I choose to be. We will call on Larsonneau before going to the station. Now, my little Maxime, I am going to shut you up, and we will escape by way of the garden, when I have turned all these people out of the house. We don't even need to take any luggage."