"What is the use of puzzling our brains about it?" he murmured. "What does it matter to us? If the judicial authorities do not know what they are doing, how can we expect to know?"
Then, with eyes lost in space, and pallid cheeks, he murmured:
"In all this there is only that poor girl who excites pity! Ah! the poor, poor girl!"
"As for me," concluded Pecqueux, "if anyone took it into his head to interfere with my wench, I should begin by strangling them both. After that, they might cut off my head. I should not care a straw."
Another silence ensued. Philomène, who was filling up the glasses a second time, affected to shrug her shoulders and chuckle; but, in reality, she felt quite upset, and gave Pecqueux a searching look sideways. He had neglected his personal appearance considerably, and looked very dirty and ragged since Mother Victoire, as a result of her accident, had become impotent, and had been obliged to relinquish her post at the station to enter an almshouse. She was no longer there, tolerant and maternal, to slip pieces of silver into his pocket, to mend his clothes, so that the other one at Havre might not accuse her of keeping their man untidy. And Philomène, bewitched by the smart, clean look of Jacques, put on an expression of disgust.
"Do you mean that you would strangle your Paris wench?" she inquired in bravado. "There is no fear of anybody carrying her off!"
"That one or another!" he growled.
But she was already touching glasses in a joking vein.
"Look here! to your health!" she exclaimed. "And bring your linen to me, so that I may have it washed and mended, for really you no longer do honour, to either of us. To your health, Monsieur Jacques!"
The latter started, as if disturbed in a dream. Notwithstanding the complete absence of remorse and the feeling of relief and physical comfort, in which he had been living since the murder, Séverine sometimes passed before his eyes as now, moving his gentle inner self to tears. And he touched glasses, remarking precipitately to hide his trouble: