Condemned to act by Fate, I revenged myself after the fashion of a tiger. Then, tearing a brocaded curtain down from its attachments, I spread it over the glass-splintered edge of the sill, crawled over it, lowered myself, dropped, and was free.
As I stood on the garden-path, looking up at the ruin I had accomplished, I heard footsteps.
The workmen were returning.
"Ah, mon Dieu, monsieur!" cried the chief ouvrier, "we had forgotten you. Not till five minutes ago did Jacques remember that monsieur had not left the house when we bolted the door and came away; so we returned, running all the way from Etiolles."
So my destruction of the window had been in vain, it would seem! Not so; for, just as at a first debauch the demon of drunkenness enters a man's heart, so at this orgie of destruction did the demon of destruction enter mine.
"Joubert," said I that night, as I went to bed, "you have everything ready for to-morrow?"
"All is ready," replied Joubert.
"You will call me at half-past five."
"Yes, monsieur. And your promise?"