Antoine read the letter, crushed it in his great, trembling hand, and looked round him as though searching blankly for the hostile power, that had thus entangled, baffled and overthrown him.  That voice from the grave seemed to call on him to claim again the rights that had been snatched from him.  She was his, and he would see her face once more:  he would go to Cherbourg, and look on her dead face, that he might know it, for she was his.

He would be in time, if he caught the night train (the funeral was the following day).  He would have to walk to St. Jean-du-Pied, the next village along the coast, from which a diligence started in the afternoon to the nearest railway station.  Old Aimee did up a little packet of necessaries for him, and borrowed money for the journey, saying nothing as she watched his face, full of the inarticulate suffering of the untaught.  Antoine scarcely said farewell, as he walked straight out of the cottage door towards the sea, to take the shortest route to St. Jean-du-Pied by the coast.  The rocks were white from the sea-foam, as if with driven snow, and the black sea was lashed to madness by a gale from the North East.  The bitter wind tore across the bleak country-side, scourging every rock, tree and living thing that attempted to resist it, like the desolation of God descending in judgment on the land.  Wild, torn clouds chased each other across the sky, and the deep roar of the sea among the rocks could be heard far inland.

Antoine’s thoughts meanwhile were whirling tumultuously round and round one object—­an object that had hovered fitfully before his mind for many weeks—­pressing closer and closer on it, till at length with triumphant realization, they seized on it and made it the imperious necessity of his will.

Ever since the night in the ravine, Antoine had been living in a strange world:  he had not known himself:  his hand had seemed against every man’s, and every man’s hand against his.  He never went to mass, for he felt that the good God had abandoned him.

Now he suddenly realised what it was he needed—­the just punishment of Geoffroi.  The path of life would be straight again, and God on His Throne in heaven, when Justice had been vindicated, and he had visited his crime on the evil-doer.  That he must do it himself, was plain to him.

He marched on, possessed with a feeling that it was Geoffroi whom he was going to seek, towards the projecting foreland that shut in the village on the east.  He was drenched by the waves, as they dashed madly against the walls of rock, and to get round the boulders under such circumstances was a dangerous task even for a skilled climber:  but Antoine seemed borne forward by a force stronger than himself, and went on without pause, or doubt, till in a small inlet on the other side of the foreland, he discerned a figure clinging to a narrow ledge of rock, usually out of reach of the tide, but towards which the mighty waves were now rolling up more and more threateningly each moment.  There was no mistaking the lithe, cringing movements, the particular turn of the head looking backward over the shoulder in terror at the menacing waters:  even if Antoine had not known beforehand that he must find Geoffroi on that path, and that he had come to meet him.