rious and apparently
crazy. He did not lower his tone, in spite of the sudden terror
expressed by Vaudrey, who seized his hand and said to him eagerly: "Why,
keep quiet! Suppose some one is listening?"

He felt himself, moreover, impelled by a violent rage. If what Guy told
him were correct, Marianne had made use of him and of the title of
mistress that she ought to have concealed. She had played it in order to
compel Jouvenet to commit an outrage.

"Nonsense!" said Lissac, sneeringly. "Are you innocent enough to believe
that she has seduced the Prefect of Police by simply telling him that
she was your mistress? You don't know her. She only did this in becoming
his!"

Sulpice had become livid, and he looked at Lissac with a sudden
expression of hatred, as if this man had been his enemy. Guy had
directly attacked his vanity and his heart with a knife-thrust, as it
were, without sparing either his self-love or his passion.

"Ah! yes," said Lissac, "I know very well that that annoys you, but it
is so! I knew this young lady before you did. Let her commit all the
follies that she chooses with others and throw me overboard at a pinch,
as she did three days ago, all is for the best. She is playing her role.
I am only an imbecile and I am punished for it, and it is well; but, in
order to attack me, to secure a very tiny paper, which put her very
nicely at my mercy, that she should commit a foolish and brutal outrage
against you who answer for the personnel of your administration, I
cannot forgive. She thought then that I would make use of this note
against her? She takes me for a rascal? If I wished to commit an act of
treachery, could I not go this very moment, even without the weapon that
Jouvenet's agents have taken from me, straight to her Rosas?"

"Rosas?" asked Sulpice, whose countenance contorted, and who feverishly
twisted his blond beard.

"Eh! _parbleu_, yes, Rosas! On my honor, one would take you for the
Minister of the Interior of the Moon! Rosas, who perhaps is her lover,
but will be her husband if she wishes it! and she does!"

Poor Sulpice looked at Lissac with a terrified expression which might
have been comic, did it not in its depth portray a genuine sorrow. He
was oblivious to everything now, where he was, if Guy spoke too loudly,
or if Adrienne could hear. He was only conscious of a terrible strain of
his mind. This sudden revelation lacerated him--as if his back received
the blows of a whip. He wis