Noticing the box, now in the hands of Corentin, the countess raised her whip and sprang rapidly towards him.  Striking his hands with so violent a blow that the casket fell to the ground, she seized it, flung it into the middle of the fire, and stood with her back to the chimney in a threatening attitude before either of the agents recovered from their surprise.  The scorn which flamed from her eyes, her pale brow, her disdainful lips, were even more insulting than the haughty action which treated Corentin as though he were a venomous reptile.  Old d’Hauteserre felt himself once more a cavalier; all his blood rushed to his face, and he grieved that he had no sword.  The servants trembled for an instant with joy.  The vengeance they had called down upon these men had come.  But their joy was driven back within their souls by a terrible fear; the gendarmes were still heard coming and going in the garrets.

The spy—­noun of strength, under which all shades of the police are confounded, for the public has never chosen to specify in language the varieties of those who compose this dispensary of social remedies so essential to all governments—­the spy has this curious and magnificent quality:  he never becomes angry; he possesses the Christian humility of a priest; his eyes are stolid with an indifference which he holds as a barrier against the world of fools who do not understand him; his forehead is adamant under insult; he pursues his ends like a reptile whose carapace is fractured only by a cannonball; but (like that reptile) he is all the more furious when the blow does reach him, because he believed his armor invulnerable.  The lash of the whip upon his fingers was to Corentin, pain apart, the cannonball that cracked the shell.  Coming from that magnificent and noble girl, this action, emblematic of her disgust, humiliated him, not only in the eyes of the people about him, but in his own.

Peyrade sprang to the hearth, caught Laurence’s foot, raised it, and compelled her, out of modesty, to throw herself on the sofa, where she had lately lain asleep.  The scene, like other contrasts in human things, was burlesque in the midst of terror.  Peyrade scorched his hand as he dashed it into the fire to seize the box; but he got it, threw it on the floor and sat down upon it.  These little actions were done with great rapidity and without a word being uttered.  Corentin, recovering from the pain of the blow, caught Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne by both hands, and held her.

“Do not compel me to use force against you,” he said, with withering politeness.

Peyrade’s action had extinguished the fire by the natural process of suppressing the air.

“Gendarmes! here!” he cried, still occupying his ridiculous position.

“Will you promise to behave yourself?” said Corentin, insolently, addressing Laurence, and picking up his dagger, but not committing the great fault of threatening her with it.