Let them attack him; let them but ask a question and he would know how to exonerate himself! What harm was he doing, anyhow? Was he running from salon to salon, as did so many of his colleagues? Had he taken advantage of his triumph to break into the little literary Bastilles which were the final goal of so many paltry ambitions? Had he not, on the contrary, declined, one after another, all the invitations given him, by Mme. Pums, by Mme. Herschstein, by Mme. de Marquesse, even by ladies of higher social status whom he could name if called upon? Had he not a score of times discreetly urged his wife and daughter to pay the call they owed the Chambannes? Was he not ready to take them to the rue de Prony as often as they could wish? Did he manifest any spite, as so many others might do, for all the deceptions and for the bitterness which Mme. Raindal's uneasy religiosity had scattered between them? Did he play the part of a bad husband, a bad father, a frivolous and dissipated man?... Well then, what was it they reproached him with? Why was he compelled to suspect his own family as he had to suspect his own sworn enemies? There was that wretch of a Saulvard, for instance, who carried the rancor of his defeat to the point of declining three successive invitations of Mme. Chambannes.... The entanglement of his worries, added to the silence he imposed upon himself, made him feel disgusted with his own house, his home and everything that he had until then considered as happiness and quiet. He proved his own innocence to himself so often that doubts came to him at times. He asked himself whether his friendship with young Mme. Chambannes was not such as might cause him some prejudice in the scientific world, whether it might not be more seemly for him to allow more time to pass between his visits, and whether his regularity might not be affording the evil-minded an opening. At once a rebellion which he attributed to pride moved him to smile at such scruples. He derived from his reflections a new energy for the indulgence of his inclination. Throughout the week, he lost no opportunity, whether at the dining-table or elsewhere, to flay the ridicule of pedantry, the hypocrisy of austere people, a whole mass of foibles and of anonymous characters, upon whom, with no less good grounds, Mme. Raindal, Thérèse and Uncle Cyprien might have bestowed their own names as well. Thus came the Thursday, and he made his exit with a provocative, almost bellicose, banging of all the doors in succession.