Would he be able to resist the pressure which from all sides at once pushed him toward the Rue Sainte Anne?

It seemed that nothing was easier than not to commit the folly of yielding, and yet such was the persistence of the efforts that were united against him, that he asked himself if, one day, he would not be led to obey them in spite of himself.  Phillis, Nougarede, Madame Cormier.  Now, whence would come a new attack?

For several months he had enjoyed a complete security, which convinced him that all danger was over forever.  But all at once this danger burst forth under such conditions that he must recognize that there could never more be any security for him.  To-day Madame Dammauville menaced him; tomorrow it would be some one else.  Who?  He did not know.  Every one.  And it was the anguish of his position to be condemned to live hereafter in fear, and on the defensive, without repose, without forgetfulness.

But it was not tomorrow about which he need be uneasy at this moment, it was the present hour; that is to say, Madame Dammauville.

That she should say, with so much firmness at the sight of a single portrait, that the man who drew the curtains was not Florentin, she must have an excellent memory of the eyes; at the same time a resolute mind and a decision in her ideas, which permitted her to affirm without hesitation what she believed to be true.

If they should ever meet, she would recognize him, and recognizing him, she would speak.

Would she be believed?

This was the decisive question, and from what he had heard of her, it seemed that she would be.

Denials would not suffice.  He did not go to Caffie’s at a quarter past five.  Where was he at this moment?  What witness could he call upon?  Caffie’s wound was made by a hand skilled in killing, and this learned hand was his, more even than that of a murderer.  Every one knew that his position at that moment was desperate, financially speaking; and, suddenly, he paid his debts.  Who would believe the Monte Carlo story?

One word, one little hint, from this Madame Dammauville and he was lost, without defence, without possible struggles.

Truly, and fortunately, since she was paralyzed and confined to her bed, he ran no risk of meeting her face to face at the corner of a street, or at the house of an acquaintance, nor of hearing the cry of surprise that she would not fail to give on recognizing him.  But that was not enough to make him sleep in an imprudent security on saying to himself that this meeting was improbable.  It was improbable, also, to admit that some one was exactly opposite to Caffies window at the moment when he drew the curtains; more improbable yet to believe that this fact, insignificant in itself, that this vision, lasting only an instant, would be so solidly engraved in a woman’s memory as to be distinctly remembered after several months, as if it dated from the previous evening; and yet, of all these improbabilities, there was formed a reality which enclosed him in such a way that at any moment it might stifle him.