'Oh! what is the matter, papa?' asked Louise. 'You are distressing yourself again.' A hot tear had fallen on her brow. Then, turning round, she took hold of her father with her caressing arms and compelled him to sit down near her. 'It is not reasonable of you, papa, to distress yourself like that when we are alone,' she said. 'You are so brave in the daytime, but one would think you felt frightened in the evening, just as I used to do when I did not like to remain without a light.... But as you have work to do, you ought to work.' He tried to laugh. 'So it is you who are now the sensible grown-up person, my darling,' said he. 'But you are right, certainly; I will get to work again.' Then, however, as he continued looking at her, his eyes again clouded, and he once more began to kiss her hair, wildly, distractedly. 'What is the matter? What is the matter?' she stammered, deeply stirred, and, in her turn, shedding tears. 'Why do you kiss me like that, papa?' In quivering accents he then confessed his terror, acknowledged how menacing he found all the surrounding gloom: 'Ah, if at least you remain with me, my child, if at least they do not rob me of you as well.' She could find no answer to that plaint, but she caressed him, and they wept together. At last, having succeeded in inducing him to turn to his pupils' exercises, she herself reverted to her history lesson. But when a few minutes had elapsed anxiety came on Marc again, he was compelled to rise from his chair, and walk, walk, without a pause. One might have thought he was pursuing his lost happiness athwart all the silence and darkness of his wrecked home. Louise had lately completed her thirteenth year, so that the time when the first Communion is usually made had quite come; and all the devotees of Maillebois were indignant to see such a big girl remaining religionless, refusing to go to confession, and no longer even attending Mass. And naturally she was compassionately called a victim, crushed down beneath the brutal authority of her father, who by way of sacrilege, it was said, made her spit on the crucifix every morning and evening. Moreover, Mademoiselle Mazeline assuredly gave her lessons of diabolical depravity. But was it not a crime to leave that poor girl's soul in a state of perdition, in the power of two of the damned, whose notorious misconduct horrified every conscience? Thus, there was talk of energetic action, of organising demonstrations to compel that unnatural father to restore the daughter to her mother, the pious woman whom he had driven away by the loathsome baseness of his life.