“No.  It shall not be.  I will prevent it, if I have to cast myself between them.  I do not wish it!  I do not wish it!”

It was easy to utter such words.  But the execution of them was less easy.  Lydia knew it, for she had no sooner uttered that vow than she wrung her hands in despair—­those weak hands which Madame Steno compared in one of her letters to the paws of a monkey, the fingers were so supple and so long—­and she uttered this despairing cry:  “But how?".... which so many criminals have uttered before the issue, unexpected and fatal to them, of their shrewdest calculations.  The poet has sung it in the words which relate the story of all our faults, great and small: 

     “The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
     Make instruments to plague us.”

It is necessary that the belief in the equity of an incomprehensible judge be well grounded in us, for the strongest minds are struck by a sinister apprehension when they have to brave the chance of a misfortune absolutely merited.  The remembrance of the soothsayer’s prediction suddenly occurred to Lydia.  She uttered another cry, rubbing her hands like a somnambulist.  She saw her brother’s blood flowing....  No, the duel should not take place!  But how to prevent it?  How-how? she repeated.  Florent was not at home.  She could, therefore, not implore him.  If he should return, would there still be time?  Lincoln was not at home.  Where was he?  Perhaps at a rendezvous with Madame Steno.

The image of that handsome idol of love clasped in the painter’s arms, plunged in the abyss of intoxication which her ardent letters described, was presented to the mind of the jealous wife.  What irony to perceive thus those two lovers, whom she had wished to strike, with the ecstacy of bliss in their eyes!  Lydia would have liked to tear out their eyes, his as well as hers, and to trample them beneath her heel.  A fresh flood of hatred filled her heart.  God! how she hated them, and with what a powerless hatred!  But her time would come; another need pressed sorely—­to prevent the meeting of the following day, to save her brother.  To whom should she turn, however?  To Dorsenne?  To Montfanon?  To Baron Hafner?  To Peppino Ardea?  She thought by turns of the four personages whose almost simultaneous visits had caused her to believe that they were the seconds of the two champions.  She rejected them, one after the other, comprehending that none of them possessed enough authority to arrange the affair.  Her thoughts finally reverted to Florent’s adversary, to Boleslas Gorka, whose wife was her friend and whom she had always found so courteous.  What if she should ask him to spare her brother?  It was not Florent against whom the discarded lover bore a grudge.  Would he not be touched by her tears?  Would he not tell her what had led to the quarrel and what she should ask of her brother that the quarrel might be conciliated?  Could she not obtain from him the promise to discharge his weapon in the air, if the duel was with pistols, or, if it was with swords, simply to disarm his enemy?