She had not denied it; she had not even turned her eyes away.

And to think that he had sacrificed everything to that woman—­his fortune, his honor, even his lovely Claire, who lay sleeping with her child in the adjoining room—­a whole lifetime of happiness within reach of his hand, which he had spurned for that vile creature!  Now she had admitted that she did not love him, that she loved another.  And he, the coward, still longed for her.  In heaven’s name, what potion had she given him?

Carried away by indignation that made the blood boil in his veins, Georges Fromont started from his armchair and strode feverishly up and down the room, his footsteps echoing in the silence of the sleeping house like living insomnia.  The other was asleep upstairs.  She could sleep by favor of her heedless, remorseless nature.  Perhaps, too, she was thinking of her Cazaboni.

When that thought passed through his mind, Georges had a mad longing to go up, to wake Risler, to tell him everything and destroy himself with her.  Really that deluded husband was too idiotic!  Why did he not watch her more closely?  She was pretty enough, yes, and vicious enough, too, for every precaution to be taken with her.

And it was while he was struggling amid such cruel and unfruitful reflections as these that the devil of anxiety whispered in his ear: 

“The notes! the notes!”

The miserable wretch!  In his wrath he had entirely forgotten them.  And yet he had long watched the approach of that terrible last day of January.  How many times, between two assignations, when his mind, free for a moment from thoughts of Sidonie, recurred to his business, to the realities of life-how many times had he said to himself, “That day will be the end of everything!” But, as with all those who live in the delirium of intoxication, his cowardice convinced him that it was too late to mend matters, and he returned more quickly and more determinedly to his evil courses, in order to forget, to divert his thoughts.

But that was no longer possible.  He saw the impending disaster clearly, in its full meaning; and Sigismond Planus’s wrinkled, solemn face rose before him with its sharply cut features, whose absence of expression softened their harshness, and his light German-Swiss eyes, which had haunted him for many weeks with their impassive stare.

Well, no, he had not the hundred thousand francs, nor did he know where to get them.

The crisis which, a few hours before, seemed to him a chaos, an eddying whirl in which he could see nothing distinctly and whose very confusion was a source of hope, appeared to him at that moment with appalling distinctness.  An empty cash-box, closed doors, notes protested, ruin, are the phantoms he saw whichever way he turned.  And when, on top of all the rest, came the thought of Sidonie’s treachery, the wretched, desperate man, finding nothing to cling to in that shipwreck, suddenly uttered a sob, a cry of agony, as if appealing for help to some higher power.