And suddenly the young man's face expressed a sensation of fright, as one sees in the face of a pedestrian who suddenly finds that he is about to step upon a viper.
"Or how he will be soon!" added the little man, with an amiable smile. Bernardet dissimulated under this amiability an intense joy. Holding his arm and elbow in an apparently careless manner close to his neighbor as he pronounced Rovère's name, Bernardet felt his neighbor's whole body tremble, and that he gave a very perceptible start. Why had he been so quickly moved by an unknown name if it had not recalled to his mind some frightful thought? The man might, of course, know, as the public did, all the details of the crime, but, with his strong, energetic face, his resolute look, he did not appear like a person who would be troubled by the recital of a murder, the description of a bloody affray, or even by the frightful scene which had just passed before his eyes in the hall.
"A man of that stamp is not chicken-hearted," thought Bernardet. "No! no!" Hearing those words evoked the image of the dead man, Rovère; the man was not able to master his violent emotion, and he trembled, as if under an electrical discharge. The shudder had been violent, of short duration, however, as if he had mastered his emotion by his strong will. In his involuntary movement he had displayed a tragic eloquence. Bernardet had seen in the look, in the gesture, in the movement of the man's head, something of trouble, of doubt, of terror, as in a flash of lightning in the darkness of night one sees the bottom of a pool.
Bernardet smilingly said to him:
"This sight is not a gay one!"
"No," the man answered, and he also attempted to smile.
He looked back to the stage, where the sombre play went on.
"That poor Rovère!" Bernardet said.
The other man now looked at Bernardet as if to read his thoughts and to learn what signification the repetition of the same name had. Bernardet sustained, with a naïve look, this mute interrogation. He allowed nothing of his thoughts to be seen in the clear, childlike depths of his eyes. He had the air of a good man, frightened by a terrible murder, and who spoke of the late victim as if he feared for himself. He waited, hoping that the man would speak.
In some of Bernardet's readings he had come across the magic rule applicable to love: "Never go! Wait for the other to come!"—"Nec ire, fac venire"—applicable also to hate, to that duel of magnetism between the hunted man and the police spy, and Bernardet waited for the other to "come!"