What followed came suddenly and unexpectedly, like a thunder-clap. In three bounds, Lupin rushed into the drawing-room, sprang upon the young man, flung him to the ground and, with one hand on his rival's chest, beside himself with anger, turning to Mrs. Kesselbach, he cried:
"But don't you know? Hasn't he told you, the cheat? . . . And you love him, you love that! Does he look like a grand-duke? Oh, what a joke!"
He grinned and chuckled like a madman, while Dolores gazed at him in stupefaction:
"He, a grand-duke! Hermann IV., Grand-duke of Zweibrucken-Veldenz! A reigning sovereign! Elector of Treves! But it's enough to make one die of laughing! He! Why, his name is Baupré, Gérard Baupré, the lowest of ragamuffins . . . a beggar, whom I picked up in the gutter! . . . A grand-duke? But it's I who made him a grand-duke! Ha, ha, ha, what a joke! . . . If you had seen him cut his little finger . . . he fainted three times . . . the milksop! . . . Ah, you allow yourself to lift your eyes to ladies . . . and to rebel against the master! . . . Wait a bit, Grand-duke of Zweibrucken-Veldenz, I'll show you!"
He took him in his arms, like a bundle, swung him to and fro for a moment and pitched him through the open window:
"Mind the rose trees, grand-duke! There are thorns!"
When he turned round, Dolores was close to him and looking at him with eyes which he had never seen in her before, the eyes of a woman who hates and who is incensed with rage. Could this possibly be Dolores, the weak, ailing Dolores?
She stammered:
"What are you doing? . . . How dare you? . . . And he. . . . Then it's true? . . . lied to me? . . ."
"Lied to you?" cried Lupin, grasping the humiliation which she had suffered as a woman. "Lied to you? He, a grand-duke! A puppet, that's all, a puppet of which I pulled the string . . . an instrument which I tuned, to play upon as I chose! Oh, the fool, the fool!"