“He went at six o’clock, Monsieur Fabien.”
“Why didn’t you wake me?”
“How could I guess? Never, never does he go out before breakfast. I never have seen him like this before, not even when his wife died.”
“What can be the matter with him?”
“I think it’s the sale of the practice. He said to me last night, at the fool of the staircase: ‘I am a brokenhearted man, Madeleine, a broken-hearted man. I might have got over it, but that monster of ingratitude, that cannibal’—saving your presence, Monsieur Fabien—‘would not have it so. If I had him here I don’t know what I should do to him.’”
“Didn’t he tell you what he would do to the cannibal?”
“No. So I slipped a little note under your door when I went upstairs.”
“Yes. I am much obliged to you for it. Is he any calmer this morning?”
“He doesn’t look angry any longer, only I noticed that he had been weeping.”
“Where is he?”