ad he not foreseen that there was another door to Madame
Dammauville's room besides the door from the parlor? But if he had
foreseen it, it would not have lessened the danger of the situation.

He would have had time to prepare himself, that was all. But to prepare
himself for what? Either to enter the room and brave this danger, or to
fly. He entered.

"This is what we have decided," Balzajette said, who never lost an
occasion to put himself forward and to speak.

While he spoke, Madame Dammauville seemed not to listen to him. Her eyes
were on Saniel, placed between her and the chimney with his back to the
lamps, and she looked at him with a characteristic fixedness.

Balzajette, who listened to himself, observed nothing; but Saniel, who
knew what there was behind this glance, could not but be struck with
it. Happily for him, he had only to let Balzajette talk, for if he had
spoken he would surely have betrayed himself by the quivering of his
voice.

However, Balzajette seemed coming to the end of his explanations.
Suddenly Saniel saw Madame Dammauville extend her hand toward the lamp
on the table, and raise the shade by lowering it toward her in such a
way as to form a reflector that threw the light on him. At the same time
he received a bright ray full on his face.

Madame Dammauville uttered a small, stifled cry.

Balzajette stopped; then his astonished eyes went from Madame
Dammauville to Saniel, and front Saniel to Madame Dammauville.

"Are you suffering?" he asked.

"Not at all."

What, then, was the matter? But it was seldom that he asked for an
explanation of a thing that astonished him, preferring to divine and to
explain it himself.

"Ah! I understand it," he said with a satisfied smile.

"The youth of my young 'confrere' astonishes you. It is his fault. Why
the devil did he have his long hair and his light curled beard cut?"

If Madame Dammauville had not released the lampshade, she would have
seen Saniel turned pale and his lips quiver.

"Mais voila!" continued Balzajette. "He made this sacrifice to his new
functions; the student has disappeared before the professor."

He might have continued along time. Neither Madame Dammauville nor
Saniel listened to him; but, thinking of his dinner, he was not going
to launch into a discourse that at any other moment he would not have
failed to undertake. He rose to go.

As Saniel bowed, Madame Dammauville stopped him with a movement of her
hand.