Patrice grew excited:
“He’s going away! You really ought to have collared him. Shall we ever find him again, the scoundrel? Shall we ever be able to take our revenge?”
Don Luis smiled:
“There you go, calling him a scoundrel, the man who watched over you for twenty years, who brought you and Little Mother Coralie together, who was your benefactor!”
“Oh, I don’t know! All this is so bewildering! I can’t help hating him. . . . The idea of his getting away maddens me. . . . I should like to torture him and yet . . .”
He yielded to a feeling of despair and took his head between his two hands. Don Luis comforted him:
“Have no fear,” he said. “He was never nearer his downfall than at the present moment. I hold him in my hand as I hold this leaf.”
“But how?”
“The man who’s driving him belongs to me.”
“What’s that? What do you mean?”