The poor girl had said once, you know, that she was afraid of her nature. Assuredly it had now sprung erect in its strength; it came hurrying into action on the winds of her indignation. "Remember, Coquelin," she went on, "you are still and always my friend. You are the guardian of my weakness, the support of my strength."
"Say it all, Gabrielle!" he cried. "I'm for ever and ever your lover!"
Suddenly, above the music of his voice, there came a great rattling knock at the door. Coquelin sprang forward; it opened in his face and disclosed my father and M. de Treuil. I have no words in my dictionary, no images in my rhetoric, to represent the sudden horror that leaped into my father's face as his eye fell upon his sister. He staggered back a step and then stood glaring, until his feelings found utterance in a single word: "Coureuse!" I have never been able to look upon the word as trivial since that moment.
The Vicomte came striding past him into the room, like a bolt of lightning from a rumbling cloud, quivering with baffled desire, and looking taller by the head for his passion. "And it was for this, mademoiselle," he cried, "and for that!" and he flung out a scornful hand toward Coquelin. "For a beggarly, boorish, ignorant pedagogue!"
Coquelin folded his arms. "Address me directly, M. le Vicomte," he said; "don't fling mud at me over mademoiselle's head."
"You? Who are you?" hissed the nobleman. "A man doesn't address you; he sends his lackeys to flog you!"
"Well, M. le Vicomte, you're complete," said Coquelin, eyeing him from head to foot.
"Complete?" and M. de Treuil broke into an almost hysterical laugh. "I only lack having married your mistress!"
"Ah!" cried Mlle. de Bergerac.
"O, you poor, insensate fool!" said Coquelin.