Morestal gave a bound:
"And you took it from the waste-paper basket, where it lay torn and crumpled! You did a thing like that, you, my son! You had the infamy ..."
"Oh, father!"
"Then what? Answer!"
"Private Baufeld gave it me before his death."
Morestal was standing opposite Philippe, with his arms crossed over his chest, and, so far from defending himself against his son's accusations, seemed rather to be addressing a culprit.
And Philippe looked at him with eyes of anguish. At each blow that he struck, at each sentence that he uttered, he detected the mark of a wound on his father's face. A vein swelling on the old man's temples distressed him beyond measure. He was terrified to see streaks of blood mingle with the whites of his eyes. And he feared, at every moment, that his father would fall like a tree which the axe has struck to the heart.
The under-secretary, after examining the sheet of paper which Philippe had given him, resumed:
"In any case, M. Morestal, these lines were written by you?"
"Yes, monsieur le ministre. I have already stated what the man Dourlowski tried to get out of me and the answer which I gave him."