Marie felt that no human power, not even her own, could prevent Frederick's interposition this time, if Jacques Bastien, intoxicated as in all probability he was, should enter her chamber, and attack her with invective and threatening.
The alternative was terrible.
Not to open the door would be to expose herself to a deplorable scandal. To open it was to set the son and father face to face, one drunk with anger and wine, the other exasperated by the sense of his mother's wrongs.
These reflections, as rapid as thought, Marie had scarcely ended, when she heard Jacques Bastien, who had found the key, turn it in the lock and, finding an obstacle inside, shake the door violently.
Then Marie took a desperate resolution; she ran to the door, removed the bolt, and standing on the threshold as if to forbid entrance to Jacques Bastien, she said to him in a low, supplicating voice:
"My son is sleeping, monsieur; if you have something to say to me, come, I beseech you, in the library."
The unhappy woman paused a moment.
Her courage failed her, so terrible was the expression of Bastien's countenance.
The rays of the lamp placed upon the chimneypiece in Marie's bedchamber shone full upon the face of M. Bastien, which, thus brilliantly lighted, seemed to glare upon the darkness of the corridor.
This man, who had the breadth of Hercules, was now frightfully pale in consequence of the reaction of long continued drink and anger. He was about half drunk; his coarse, thick hair fell low on his forehead and almost concealed his little, wicked gray eyes. His bull-like neck was naked and his blouse open, as well as his great coat and vest, exposing a part of a powerful and hairy chest.