Sulpice had become livid, and he looked at Lissac with a sudden expression of hatred, as if this man had been his enemy.  Guy had directly attacked his vanity and his heart with a knife-thrust, as it were, without sparing either his self-love or his passion.

“Ah! yes,” said Lissac, “I know very well that that annoys you, but it is so!  I knew this young lady before you did.  Let her commit all the follies that she chooses with others and throw me overboard at a pinch, as she did three days ago, all is for the best.  She is playing her role.  I am only an imbecile and I am punished for it, and it is well; but, in order to attack me, to secure a very tiny paper, which put her very nicely at my mercy, that she should commit a foolish and brutal outrage against you who answer for the personnel of your administration, I cannot forgive.  She thought then that I would make use of this note against her?  She takes me for a rascal?  If I wished to commit an act of treachery, could I not go this very moment, even without the weapon that Jouvenet’s agents have taken from me, straight to her Rosas?”

“Rosas?” asked Sulpice, whose countenance contorted, and who feverishly twisted his blond beard.

“Eh! parbleu, yes, Rosas!  On my honor, one would take you for the Minister of the Interior of the Moon!  Rosas, who perhaps is her lover, but will be her husband if she wishes it! and she does!”

Poor Sulpice looked at Lissac with a terrified expression which might have been comic, did it not in its depth portray a genuine sorrow.  He was oblivious to everything now, where he was, if Guy spoke too loudly, or if Adrienne could hear.  He was only conscious of a terrible strain of his mind.  This sudden revelation lacerated him—­as if his back received the blows of a whip.  He wished to know all.  He questioned Lissac, forcing him into a corner, and making him hesitate, for he now feared that he would say too much, and limited himself to demanding Jouvenet’s punishment.

“As to Marianne, one would see to that after,” he said.

Ah! yes, certainly, Jouvenet should be punished!  How?  Vaudrey could not say, but from this moment the Prefect of Police was condemned.  Guy’s arrest, which was an act of brutal aggression, was tantamount to a dismissal signed by the Prefect himself.  And Marianne! she then made a sport of Sulpice and took him for a child or a ninny!

“Not at all.  For a man who loves, that is enough,” replied Lissac.

Vaudrey had flung himself into an armchair, striking his fist upon the little table, covered with the journals that he had scarcely opened, and absent-mindedly pushing the chair back, the better to give way to his excessively violent threats, after the manner of weak natures.

“Do you want my advice?” Lissac abruptly asked him.  “You have only what you deserve, ah! yes, that is just it!  I tell you the sober truth.  A wife like yours should never be forsaken for a creature like Marianne!”