“As you see, this legend comes much nearer than the history of our Bluebeard to the told tale arranged by the ingenious Perrault.  Now, why and how the name Bluebeard passed from King Comor to the Marshal de Rais, I cannot tell.  You know what pranks oral tradition can play.”

“But with your Gilles de Rais you must have to plunge into Satanism right up to the hilt,” said Chantelouve after a silence.

“Yes, and it would really be more interesting if these scenes were not so remote.  What would have a timely appeal would be a study of the Diabolism of the present day.”

“No doubt,” said Chantelouve, pleasantly.

“For,” Durtal went on, looking at him intently, “unheard-of things are going on right now.  I have heard tell of sacrilegious priests, of a certain canon who has revived the sabbats of the Middle Ages.”

Chantelouve did not betray himself by so much as a flicker of the eyelids.  Calmly he uncrossed his legs and looking up at the ceiling he said, “Alas, certain scabby wethers succeed in stealing into the fold, but they are so rare as hardly to be worth thinking about.”  And he deftly changed the subject by speaking of a book he had just read about the Fronde.

Durtal, somewhat embarrassed, said nothing.  He understood that Chantelouve refused to speak of his relations with Canon Docre.

“My dear,” said Mme. Chantelouve, addressing her husband, “you have forgotten to turn up your lamp wick.  It is smoking.  I can smell it from here, even through the closed door.”

She was most evidently conveying him a dismissal.  Chantelouve rose and, with a vaguely malicious smile, excused himself as being obliged to continue his work.  He shook hands with Durtal, begged him not to stay away so long in future, and gathering up the skirts of his dressing-gown he left the room.

She followed him with her eyes, then rose, in her turn, ran to the door, assured herself with a glance that it was closed, then returned to Durtal, who was leaning against the mantel.  Without a word she took his head between her hands, pressed her lips to his mouth and opened it.

He grunted furiously.

She looked at him with indolent and filmy eyes, and he saw sparks of silver dart to their surface.  He held her in his arms.  She was swooning but vigilantly listening.  Gently she disengaged herself, sighing, while he, embarrassed, sat down at a little distance from her, clenching and unclenching his hands.

They spoke of banal things:  she boasting of her maid, who would go through fire for her, he responding only by gestures of approbation and surprise.

Then suddenly she passed her hands over her forehead.  “Ah!” she said, “I suffer cruelly when I think that he is there working.  No, it would cost me too much remorse.  What I say is foolish, but if he were a different man, a man who went out more and made conquests, it would not be so bad.”