“Be quiet, Jansoulet; be quiet.”

It was in vain that he repeated the words to himself again and again:  anger, a wild anger, that intoxication of the blood that demands blood, took possession of him.  His first impulse was to hail a cab, that he might escape from the irritating street, free his body from the preoccupation of walking and maintaining a physical composure—­to hail a cab as for a wounded man.  But the carriages which thronged the square at that hour of general home-going were victorias, landaus, private broughams, hundreds of them, passing down from the lurid splendour of the Arc de Triomphe towards the violet shadows of the Tuileries, rushing, it seemed, one over another, in the sloping perspective of the avenue, down to the great square where the motionless statues, with their circular crowns on their brows, watched them as they separated towards the Faubourg Saint-Germain, the Rue Royale and the Rue de Rivoli.

Jansoulet, his newspaper in his hand, traversed this tumult without giving it a thought, carried by force of habit towards the club where he went every day for his game of cards from six to seven.  A public man, he was that still; but excited, speaking aloud, muttering oaths and threats in a voice that had suddenly grown tender again at the memory of the dear old woman.  To have dragged her into that—­her also!  Oh, if she should read it, if she should understand!  What punishment could he invent for such an infamy?  He had reached the Rue Royale, up which were disappearing with the speed of horses that knew they were going home and with glancings of shining axles, visions of veiled women, heads of fair-haired children, equipages of all kinds returning from the Bois, depositing a little genuine earth upon the Paris pavement, and bringing odours of spring mingled with the scent of poudre de riz.

Opposite the Ministry of Marine, a very high phaeton on light wheels, rather like a great spider, its body represented by the little groom hanging on to the box and the two persons occupying the front seat, just missed a collision with the curb as it turned the corner.

The Nabob raised his head and stifled a cry.

Beside a painted woman, with red hair and wearing a tiny hat with wide strings, who, perched on her leathern cushion, sat leaning stiffly forward, hands, eyes, her whole factitious person intent on driving the horse, there sat, pink and made-up also, grown fat with the same vices, Moessard, the handsome Moessard—­the harlot and the journalist; and of the two, it was not the woman who had sold herself the most.  High above those women reclining in their open carriages, those men opposite them half buried beneath the flounces of their gowns, all those poses of fatigue and weariness which the overfed exhibit in public as in contempt of pleasure and riches, they lorded it insolently, she very proud to be seen driving with the lover of the Queen, and he without the least shame in sitting beside a creature who hooked men in the drives of the Bois with the lash of her whip, removed on her high-perched seat from all fear of the salutary raids of the police.  Perhaps, in order to whet the appetite of his royal mistress, he chose to parade beneath her windows in company of Suzanne Bloch, known as Suze the Red.