He did not run but his legs nervously set a fast pace, finding relief in that hurried gait. When he reached the steps, he brushed his clothes with his sleeve, instinctively. A remnant of clear sight made him dread Aunt Panhias, her curiosity and possible inquiries. The drawing-room, however, proved to be still empty. The master rushed to the hall and swiftly climbed the stairs.... At last he was in his room. With a far resounding kick he closed his door. His trembling hand turned the key twice in the keyhole. He fell, exhausted, on the edge of his big bed, which had already been prepared for the night. His lassitude did not calm him. A boiling anger surged in his veins. His hands made gestures of destruction. He would have liked to hold Mme. Chambannes, to break her as he had the branches in her park, to crush and annihilate her. His little pupil! His little pupil! Was it she? Was it those candid lips that had uttered such abominable words. At the memory of each word, he felt a new blade piercing his heart.... No! his judgment was prejudiced and rebelled against so much infamy; his memory must be lying!... His little pupil!... His dear friend! Simultaneously, he united the basest insults with these terms of endearment. He evoked Thérèse, recalling to his mind her hatred for Zozé, and wishing that she were near him now so that they could hate the guilty one together. Ah! Thérèse had not been wrong about the shallowness of this Mme. Chambannes, her depravity and her mediocrity. In one meeting, she had appreciated her better, fathomed her and sentenced her more accurately than he had done in a hundred meetings. For she, Thérèse, did not love her, while he, alas did! "Yes! I loved her; I love her still!" he murmured fervently, as if to deny in that remorseful admission all the puny disguises, all the artifices of prudery which had sheltered a passion that was without courage. The sound of shutters being closed and footsteps coming up interrupted his meditations. He hoped that Mme. Chambannes would come in to ask him how he was. What should he say in reply? Should he fall at her knees, pitifully stammering words of love? Or should he repulse her with a scornful reply? He did not have to choose, because Zozé did not come to him. Instead of her coming, the echoes of the park took up once more in the mind of the master their vile, diabolical concert, the duet of their ravished accents. Oh! what atrocious, what repugnant words! M. Raindal compared them with the Latin footnotes of his book. At a distance of twenty centuries, they were almost the same words, the same follies as those which Cleopatra, in her worst ecstasies had stimulated in her lover, Antony the rough soldier! By means of what miracle of universal and immutable perversity had this infamous vocabulary been shamefully transmitted from the Queen of Egypt to the master's little friend? How many amorous couples must have repeated and preserved it, from generation to generation!