“Who has been touching my rats?”
No answer. Slowly, articulating each word, as if Veronica had ceased to understand the language, he repeated:
“Someone has been feeding them while I was out. Was it you, may I ask?”
Picking up her courage, she turned towards him, almost aggressively:
“You were letting them die of hunger, poor creatures! I haven’t interfered with your experiment in the least; I merely gave them....”
But at this he seized her by the sleeve and, limping back to the table, dragged her with him. There he pointed to his tables of records.
“Do you see these papers, Madam? For one fortnight I have been noting here my observations on these animals. My colleague Potier is expecting my notes to read to the Académie des Sciences at the sitting of May 17th next. To-day, April 15th, what am I to put down in this row of figures? What can I put down?”
And as she uttered not a word, he began scratching on the blank paper with the square end of his forefinger, as if it were a pen, and continued:
“On that day Madame Armand-Dubois, the investigator’s wife, listening to the dictates of her tender heart, committed—what am I to call it?—the indiscretion—the blunder—the folly ...?”
“No! say I took pity on the poor creatures—victims of an insensate curiosity.”