"That's enough. There's no need for all to set to it. If you like, you, we will just settle it together."
His fists closed and his eyes were lit up with homicidal fury; his intoxication was turning into the desire to kill.
"Are you ready? One of us must stay here. Give him a knife; I've got mine."
Catherine, exhausted and terrified, gazed at him. She remembered his confidences, his desire to devour a man when he had drunk, poisoned after the third glass, to such an extent had his drunkards of parents put this beastliness into his body. Suddenly she leapt forward, struck him with both her woman's hands, and choking with indignation shouted into his face:
"Coward! coward! coward! Isn't it enough, then, all these abominations? You want to kill him now that he can't stand upright any longer!"
She turned towards her father and her mother; she turned towards the others.
"You are cowards! cowards! Kill me, then, with him! I will tear your eyes out, I will, if you touch him again. Oh! the cowards!"
And she planted herself before her man to defend him, forgetting the blows, forgetting the life of misery, lifted up by the idea that she belonged to him since he had taken her, and that it was a shame for her when they so crushed him.
Étienne had grown pale beneath this girl's blows. At first he had been about to knock her down; then, after having wiped his face with the movement of a man who is recovering from intoxication, he said to Chaval, in the midst of deep silence:
"She is right; that's enough. Off you go."