At first the father was so surprised that he could not move.  Then, suddenly, he rushed forward, wild with rage, seized the servant by the throat and threw her up against the wall stammering: 

“Out!  Out!  Out! you brute!”

But she shook him off, and, her hair streaming down her back, her eyes snapping, she cried out: 

“What’s gettin’ hold of you?  You’re trying to thrash me because I am making this child eat soup when you are filling him with sweet stuff!”

He kept repeating, trembling from head to foot: 

“Out!  Get out-get out, you brute!”

Then, wild, she turned to him and, pushing her face up against his, her voice trembling: 

“Ah!—­you think-you think that you can treat me like that?  Oh! no.  And for whom?—­for that brat who is not even yours.  No, not yours!  No, not yours—­not yours!  Everybody knows it, except yourself!  Ask the grocer, the butcher, the baker, all of them, any one of them!”

She was growling and mumbling, choked with passion; then she stopped and looked at him.

He was motionless livid, his arms hanging by his sides.  After a short pause, he murmured in a faint, shaky voice, instinct with deep feeling: 

“You say? you say?  What do you say?”

She remained silent, frightened by his appearance.  Once more he stepped forward, repeating: 

“You say—­what do you say?”

Then in a calm voice, she answered: 

“I say what I know, what everybody knows.”

He seized her and, with the fury of a beast, he tried to throw her down.  But, although old, she was strong and nimble.  She slipped under his arm, and running around the table once more furious, she screamed: 

“Look at him, just look at him, fool that you are!  Isn’t he the living image of M. Durefour? just look at his nose and his eyes!  Are yours like that?  And his hair!  Is it like his mother’s?  I tell you that everyone knows it, everyone except yourself!  It’s the joke of the town!  Look at him!”

She went to the door, opened it, and disappeared.

Jean, frightened, sat motionless before his plate of soup.

At the end of an hour, she returned gently, to see how matters stood.  The child, after doing away with all the cakes and a pitcher full of cream and one of syrup, was now emptying the jam-pot with his soup-spoon.

The father had gone out.

Celeste took the child, kissed him, and gently carried him to his room and put him to bed.  She came back to the dining-room, cleared the table, put everything in place, feeling very uneasy all the time.

Not a single sound could be heard throughout the house.  She put her ear against’s her master’s door.  He seemed to be perfectly still.  She put her eye to the keyhole.  He was writing, and seemed very calm.

Then she returned to the kitchen and sat down, ready for any emergency.  She slept on a chair and awoke at daylight.