"Monsieur, I beseech you, go to your chamber, and let me go to mine. I repeat to you that to-morrow--" "God's thunder!" cried Jacques, beside himself with rage, "I did not tell you to go back to your chamber, but to go out of my house. Must I take you by the shoulders and put you out?" "Outside!" cried Marie, who understood from the ferocity of Bastien's face that he was speaking seriously. It was ferocity, it was stupidity, but what could be expected from such a wretch, made furious by drink. "Outside!" said Marie again, terrified. "But, monsieur, you do not mean it; it is night, it is cold." "What is all that to me?" "Monsieur, I beseech you, come to yourself. My God! it is one o'clock in the morning; where do you wish me to go?" "I will--" "But, monsieur--" "Once more! will you go out, thief?" And the colossus made a step toward his wife. "Monsieur, one word, just one word!" "Twice, will you go out?" And Jacques took another step toward his wife. "Please listen to me." "Three times! will you go out?" And the Hercules turned up his sleeves to take hold of his wife. What could the unfortunate woman do? Cry,--call for help? Frederick and David would awaken, would run to the spot, and for Marie, there was something more horrible than this cruel, outrageous expulsion; it was the shame, the dreadful idea of being seen by her son fighting against her husband, who wished to thrust her, half naked, out of his house. Her dignity as wife and as mother revolted at this thought, and above all, at the idea of a desperate struggle between her son and her husband which might result in murder,--in parricide,--for Frederick would not stop at any extremity to defend a mother driven out of the house. Marie then submitted, and when Jacques started to seize her and repeated: "Three times! will you go out?" "Ah, well, yes, yes, monsieur, I will go out," she replied, in a trembling voice. "I am going out immediately, but no noise, I implore you!" Then desperate, extending her supplicating hands toward Jacques, who, still threatening, walked up to her and pointed to the outside door, Marie, going backwards step by step in the darkness, at last reached the end of the corridor. Bastien opened the door. A puff of icy wind rushed through the entrance. Outside, nothing but darkness and drifting snow. "Oh, my God! what a night!" murmured Marie, terrified in spite of her resolution, and wishing to turn back; "mercy, monsieur!" "Good evening!" said the wretch, with a ferocious giggle, as he pushed his wife out of the door. Then, shutting the door again, he bolted it. Marie, bareheaded, and with no clothing but her dressing-gown, felt her feet sink into the thick layer of snow with which the floor of the porch was already covered, in spite of the rustic roof. A ray of hope remained to the poor woman; for a moment, she believed that her husband was only perpetrating a joke as cruel as it was stupid; but she heard Jacques walking away heavily.