“Yes, I ought,” he said to himself, “to have torn up that letter, and not driven him to prove his words.”
Wishing to do something that might look like retaining la Peyrade in the position of which he had threatened to deprive him, he remarked presently:—
“By the bye, I have just come from the printing-office; the new type has arrived, and I think we might make our first appearance to-morrow.”
La Peyrade did not answer; but he got up and took his paper nearer to the window.
“He is sulky,” thought Thuillier, “and if he is innocent, he may well be. But, after all, why did he ever bring a man like that Cerizet here?”
Then to hide his embarrassment and the preoccupation of his mind, he sat down before the editor’s table, took a sheet of the head-lined paper and made himself write a letter.
Presently la Peyrade returned to the table and sitting down, took another sheet and with the feverish rapidity of a man stirred by some emotion he drove his pen over the paper.
From the corner of his eye, Thuillier tried hard to see what la Peyrade was writing, and noticing that his sentences were separated by numbers placed between brackets, he said:—
“Tiens! are you drawing up a parliamentary law?”
“Yes,” replied la Peyrade, “the law of the vanquished.”