"Do you know? But wait, my blood boils, my indignation burns, everything in me revolts, because I cannot speak of such a base atrocity with calmness." "Unhappy woman, it concerns her. Oh, speak, speak, I pray you. You crush me, you kill me!" "Just now I was coming to join you." "And some one stopped you in the passage." "It was Marguerite. Do you know where Madame Bastien spent a part of the night?" "What do you mean?" "She spent it out of her house." "She? the night out of her house?" "Yes, her husband thrust her outdoors, half naked, this bitter cold night." David shuddered through his whole body, then pressing both hands to his forehead as if to restrain the violence of his thoughts, he said to the doctor, in a broken voice: "Wait, Pierre; I have heard your words, but I do not understand their import. A cloud seems to be passing over my mind." "At first, neither did I understand it, my friend; it was too monstrous. Marguerite, yesterday evening, a little while after leaving her mistress, heard a long conversation, sometimes in a low voice, sometimes with violence, in the library, then walking in the corridor; then the noise of a door which opened and shut, then nothing more. In the night, after the departure of M. Bastien, Marguerite, rung up by her mistress, thought at first Marie had fainted, but later, by certain indications, she had the proof that her mistress had been compelled to stay from midnight until three o'clock, in the porch, exposed to all the severity of this freezing night. So, this sickness, mortal perhaps--" "But it is a murder!" cried David, mad with grief and rage. "That man is an assassin!" "The wretch was drunk as Marguerite has told me; it was in consequence of an altercation with the unhappy woman that he thrust her outdoors." "Pierre, this man will return presently; he has insulted me grossly twice; I intend to provoke him and kill him." "Henri, keep calm." "I wish to kill him." "Listen to me." "If he refuses to fight me, I will assassinate him and kill myself afterward. Marie shall be delivered from him." "Henri, Henri! this is madness!" "Oh, my God! she, she, treated in this way!" said David, in a heartrending voice. "To know that this angel of purity, this adorable mother and saint, is always at the mercy of this stupid and brutal man! And do you not see that if she does not die this time, he will kill her some other time?" "I believe it, Henri, and yet he need not have her in his power." "And you are not willing that I--" "Henri," cried the doctor, seizing his friend's hand with effusion, "Henri, noble and excellent heart, come to yourself, be what you have always been, full of generosity and courage,--yes, of courage, for it is necessary to have courage to accomplish a cruel sacrifice, but one indispensable to the salvation of Madame Bastien." "A sacrifice for Marie's salvation! Oh, speak, speak!"