Martin learned from a perturbed Bigourdin that she had descended immediately after he had left the vestibule and had led Fargot at once into the _Salon de Lecture_, a moth-eaten and fusty cubby-hole in which commercial travellers who found morbid pleasure in the early stages of asphyxiation sometimes wrote their letters. There they had remained for some time, at the end of which Monsieur Fargot—“_il avait l’air hébété_,” according to Baptiste, a witness of his exit—had issued forth alone and jumped into his car and sped away, presumably to Bordeaux. After a moment or two Mademoiselle Corinne, in her turn, had emerged from the _Salon de Lecture_ and looking very haughty with her pretty head in the air—(again Baptiste)—had mounted to her apartment. Those were the bare facts. Bigourdin narrated them simply, in order to account for Corinna’s non-appearance at dinner. With admirable taste he forbore to question Martin as to the relations between the lady and her visitor. Nor did Martin enlighten him. An art-student in Paris like Corinna must necessarily have a host of friends. What more natural than that one, finding himself in her neighbourhood, should make a passing call. Such was the tacit convention between Martin and Bigourdin. But the breast of each harboured the conviction that the visit had not been a success of cordiality. Bigourdin exhibited brighter spirits that night at the Café de l’Univers. He played his game of backgammon with Monsieur le Maire and beat him exultantly. Around him the coterie cursed the Germans for forcing the three years’ service on France. He paused, arm uplifted in the act of throwing the dice. “Never mind. They seek it—they will get it. _Vous l’avez voulu, Georges Dandin._ The _bon Dieu_ is on our side, just as He is on mine in this battle here. _Vlan!_” The dice rattled out of the box and they showed the number that declared him the winner. A great shout arose. The honest burgesses cried miracle. _Voyons_, it was a sign from heaven to France. “_In hoc signo vinces!_” cried a professor at the _Ecole Normale_, and the sober company had another round of bocks to celebrate the augury. Martin and Bigourdin walked home through the narrow, silent streets and over the bridges. There was a high wind sharpened by a breath of autumn which ruffled the dim surface of the water; and overhead a rack of cloud scudded athwart the stars. A light or two far up the gloomy scaur shewed the Hôtel des Grottes. Bigourdin waved his hand in the darkness. “It is beautiful, all this.” Martin assented and buttoned up his overcoat. “It is beautiful to me,” said Bigourdin, “because it is my own country. I was born and bred here and my forefathers before me. It is part of me like my legs and my arms. I don’t say that I am beautiful myself,” he added, with a laugh, his French wit seeing whither logic would lead him. “But you understand.”