'She begs you to excuse her,' Boisgelin replied in very correct fashion. 'She woke up this morning with a sick headache, and has been unable to leave her room.' Each time that there was any question of going to the Abyss matters took this course--Suzanne found some pretext for avoiding such an aggravation of her grief, and only Delaveau, in his blindness, failed to understand the truth. Moreover, Boisgelin immediately changed the conversation. 'Ah! so here we are on the eve of the famous law-suit,' said he. 'It is as good as settled, eh? La Crêcherie will be condemned!' Delaveau shrugged his broad shoulders. 'What does it matter to us whether it be condemned or not?' he replied. 'It does us harm, no doubt, by lowering the price of metal, but we don't compete in manufactured articles, and there is nothing very serious as yet.' Fernande, who looked wondrously beautiful that day, stood quivering, gazing at her husband with flaming eyes. 'Oh! you don't know how to hate!' she cried. 'What! that man set himself to thwart all your plans, founded at your very door a rival enterprise, the success of which would be the ruin of the one you manage--a man, too, who never ceases to be an obstacle and a threat--and you don't even desire to see him crushed! Ah! if he's flung naked into a ditch I shall be only too pleased!' From the very first day she had felt that Luc would be the enemy, and she could not speak calmly of that man who threatened her enjoyment of life. Therein for her lay his one great unique crime. With her ever-increasing appetite for pleasure and luxury, she required ever larger profits, an abundance of prosperity for the works, hundreds and hundreds of workmen, kneading, fashioning steel at the flaming doors of their furnaces. She was the devourer of men and money, the one whose cravings the Abyss with its steam hammers and its huge machinery no longer sufficed to satisfy. And what would become of her hopes of future pomp and vanity, of millions amassed and devoured, if the Abyss should fall into difficulties, and succumb to competition? With that thought in her mind, she left neither her husband nor Boisgelin any rest, but ever urged them on, worried them incessantly, seizing every opportunity to give expression to her anger and her fears. Boisgelin, who feigned a superior kind of way--never meddling with business matters, but spending the profits of the works without counting them, setting his only glory in being a handsome ladykiller, an elegant horseman, and a great sportsman--was none the less accustomed to shiver when he heard Fernande speak of possible ruin. Thus, on the present occasion, turning towards Delaveau, in whom he retained absolute confidence, he inquired, 'You have no anxiety, eh, cousin? All is going on well here?'