She was instantly interested, attracted, like all women, by the dramatic element, and she asked, immediately softened, and suddenly seized with a sort of esteem for this man who was going to risk his life for her sake:
"When are you going to fight him?"
He replied tranquilly: "We are not going to fight: the matter has been arranged by our seconds. Maze has sent me an apology."
Transported with rage, she boxed his ears. "Ah, he insults me in your presence, and you permit it, and refuse to fight him! It needed but this to make you a coward."
Enraged at this he cried: "I command you to hold your tongue. I know better than you do how to protect my honour. To convince you, here is the letter of M. Maze; take it and read it, and see for yourself."
She took the letter, ran her eye over it, and divining the whole truth, sneered: "You wrote him a letter also? You are afraid of each other. What cowards men are! If we were in your place, we women—after all, it is I who have been insulted, your wife, and you are willing to let it pass. That need not astonish me, for you are not man enough to beget a child. That explains everything. You are as impotent before women as you are cowardly among men. Ah, I have married a nice worm!"
She had suddenly assumed the voice and gestures of her father, the coarse and vulgar manners of an old trooper, and the intonations of a man.
Standing before him, her hands on her hips, tall, strong, vigorous, her chest protruding, her cheeks flushed, her voice deep and vibrant, she looked at this little man seated in front of her, a trifle bald, clean shaven except for the short side-whiskers of the lawyer, and she felt a desire to crush, to strangle him.
She continued: "You are capable of nothing—of nothing whatever! You allow everybody at the Ministry, even, to be promoted over your head!"
The door opened, and Cachelin entered, attracted by the sound of their voices, and demanded to know what was the matter. "I told the truth to that worm!" answered Cora.