Lesable raised his eyes, and for the first time noticed the resemblance between father and daughter. It seemed to him that a veil was lifted and the pair were revealed in their true colours—the same coarse nature was common to both; and he, a ruined man, was condemned to live between the two forever.
Cachelin exclaimed: "If you only could get a divorce! It is not very satisfactory to have married a capon."
At that word, trembling and blazing with fury, Lesable sprang up with a bound. He rushed at his father-in-law shouting: "Get out of here! Begone! You are in my house—do you understand?—and I order you to leave it." He seized from the table a bottle of sedative water and brandished it like a club.
Cachelin, intimidated, backed out of the room, muttering: "What will he do next, I wonder?"
But Lesable was too angry to be easily appeased. He turned upon his wife, who regarded this outburst in astonishment, and placing the bottle on the table cried: "As for you—as for you—" But as words failed him to express his rage, he was choked into silence, and stood glaring at her with a distorted visage.
She began to laugh.
This mocking laughter put him beside himself, and springing upon her he seized her by the throat with his left hand, while he boxed her ears furiously with the right. She recoiled, terrified and suffocating, and fell backward on the bed, while he continued to strike her. Suddenly he raised himself, out of breath, exhausted and heartily ashamed of his brutality; he stammered: "There—there—there—that will do!"
But she did not move; it seemed as if he had killed her. She lay on her back, on the side of the bed, her face concealed by her hands.
He approached her in alarm, wondering what had happened, and expecting her to uncover her face and look at him. She made no sign, and suspense becoming intolerable he murmured: "Cora, Cora, speak!" But she did not move or reply.
What was the matter with her? What was she going to do?