Lesable, for his part, accepted without discussion the arrangement of his seconds, and declared: “As this is the result of your mutual consultation, I can but acquiesce.”
The four plenipotentiaries assembled. The letters were exchanged, they saluted gravely, and so the affair terminated. An extraordinary excitement reigned in the Ministry. The employees, carrying the news, passed from one door to the other, and lingered to gossip about in the lobbies. When they heard how the affair had ended, there was general disappointment. Someone said: “Still, that will not get Lesable a baby.” And the saying took. One employee made a rhyme upon it.
But at the moment when everything seemed adjusted, a difficulty suggested itself to Boissel: “What would be the attitude of the two adversaries when they found themselves face to face? Would they speak, or would they ignore each other?” It was decided that they should meet, as if by chance, in the office of the chief, and exchange, in the presence of M. Torchebeuf, some words of politeness.
This ceremony was accordingly accomplished, and Maze, having sent for a carriage, returned home, to try to remove the stain from his face.
Lesable and Cachelin drove home together without speaking, mutually exasperated, each blaming the other for the disgraceful affair.
The moment he entered the house, Lesable threw his hat violently on the table and cried to his wife: “I have had enough of it! I have a duel on your account now!” She looked at him in angry surprise.
“A duel? How is that?”
“Because Maze has insulted me on your account.”
She approached him. “On my account? How?”
He threw himself passionately into an armchair and exclaimed: “He has insulted me—no need to say any more about it.”
But she would know. “You must repeat to me the words he used about me.”
Lesable blushed, and then stammered: “He told me—he told me—it was in regard to your sterility.”
She gave a start; then recoiling in fury, the paternal rudeness showing through the woman’s nature, she burst out:
“I! I am sterile, am I? What does that clown know about it? Sterile with you, yes; because you are not a man. But if I had married another, no matter who, do you hear? I should have had children. Ah, you had better talk! It has cost me dear to have married a softy like you! And what did you reply to this good-for-nothing?”
Lesable, frightened before this storm, stuttered: “I—I slapped his face.”
She looked at him in astonishment.
“And what did he do?”
“He sent me a challenge; that was all.”
She was instantly interested, attracted, like all women, by the dramatic element, and she asked, immediately softened, and suddenly seized with a sort of esteem for this man who was going to risk his life for her sake:
“When are you going to fight him?”
He replied tranquilly: “We are not going to fight: the matter has been arranged by our seconds. Maze has sent me an apology.”
Transported with rage, she boxed his ears. “Ah, he insults me in your presence, and you permit it, and refuse to fight him! It needed but this to make you a coward.”
Enraged at this he cried: “I command you to hold your tongue. I know better than you do how to protect my honour. To convince you, here is the letter of M. Maze; take it and read it, and see for yourself.”
She took the letter, ran her eye over it, and divining the whole truth, sneered: “You wrote him a letter also? You are afraid of each other. What cowards men are! If we were in your place, we women—after all, it is I who have been insulted, your wife, and you are willing to let it pass. That need not astonish me, for you are not man enough to beget a child. That explains everything. You are as impotent before women as you are cowardly among men. Ah, I have married a nice worm!”
She had suddenly assumed the voice and gestures of her father, the coarse and vulgar manners of an old trooper, and the intonations of a man.
Standing before him, her hands on her hips, tall, strong, vigorous, her chest protruding, her cheeks flushed, her voice deep and vibrant, she looked at this little man seated in front of her, a trifle bald, clean shaven except for the short side-whiskers of the lawyer, and she felt a desire to crush, to strangle him.
She continued: “You are capable of nothing—of nothing whatever! You allow everybody at the Ministry, even, to be promoted over your head!”
The door opened, and Cachelin entered, attracted by the sound of their voices, and demanded to know what was the matter. “I told the truth to that worm!” answered Cora.
Lesable raised his eyes, and for the first time noticed the resemblance between father and daughter. It seemed to him that a veil was lifted and the pair were revealed in their true colours—the same coarse nature was common to both; and he, a ruined man, was condemned to live between the two forever.
Cachelin exclaimed: “If you only could get a divorce! It is not very satisfactory to have married a capon.”
At that word, trembling and blazing with fury, Lesable sprang up with a bound. He rushed at his father-in-law shouting: “Get out of here! Begone! You are in my house—do you understand? and I order you to leave it.” He seized from the table a bottle of sedative water and brandished it like a club.
Cachelin, intimidated, backed out of the room, muttering: “What will he do next, I wonder?”
But Lesable was too angry to be easily appeased. He turned upon
