For more than a minute, he could not catch his breath. They were soon on the Boulevards. He stood up in the cab leaning against the driver’s seat.
“I don’t see the brougham anywhere,” he said.
“Oh, I see it all right, sir. But it is drawn by a splendid horse!”
“Yours ought to be a better one. I said twenty francs; I’ll make it forty.”
The driver whipped up his horse most mercilessly, and growled, “It’s no use, I must catch her. For twenty francs, I would have let her escape; for I love the girls, and am on their side. But, fancy! Forty francs! I wonder how such an ugly man can be so jealous.”
Old Tabaret tried in every way to occupy his mind with other matters. He did not wish to reflect before seeing the woman, speaking with her, and carefully questioning her.
He was sure that by one word she would either condemn or save her lover.
“What! condemn Noel? Ah, well! yes.”
The idea that Noel was the assassin harassed and tormented him, and buzzed in his brain, like the moth which flies again and again against the window where it sees a light.
As they passed the Chaussee d’Antin, the brougham was scarcely thirty paces in advance. The cab driver turned, and said: “But the Brougham is stopping.”