I returned to the hall and was going toward Madame Dauberny's box, when a lady rushed up to me. It was Frédérique. She took my arm and led me away, saying:
"Come! let us go! let us go!"
I followed her from the building. She almost made me run; she squeezed my arm convulsively; I spoke to her, and she did not reply; but she wept, and hid her face in her handkerchief. At last we arrived at her house. Then she threw herself into a chair and her sobs burst forth anew. I knelt at her feet; I took her hand and begged her to tell me the cause of her grief.
"The cause? the cause? You ask me that when you are to fight to-morrow—for me?"
"I am to fight?"
"Oh! no falsehoods! I recognized you at the entrance to the orchestra. You struck Saint-Bergame."
"Yes, for he insulted you."
She took my head in her hands and kissed me again and again, crying:
"Ah! that was well done! Thanks, my friend! I expected nothing less from you."
"Well! in that case, why these tears, this grief, when I am going to punish a man who had insulted you once before? I found this evening an opportunity that I have been looking for ever since our drive in the Bois de Boulogne."