"You," Madame l'Etiquette said, addressing Germain, "have dared to enact such a scene here. You, the apothecary's apprentice——"
"Madame," Cyrène cried, her eyes flashing, "withdraw those words! I demand it!"
The situation aroused all his faculties.
"Madame la Maréchale," said he quite coolly, "has taken, I observe, the word of my enemies without asking for the facts. I shall not fatigue her with arguments, as I am on my way to produce the proofs."
With two profound bows, the first to Cyrène, the other to Madame de Noailles, he withdrew.
[CHAPTER XXXII]
A STRONG PROOF
Remorse in all its horror seized him with the last glance of Cyrène's tearful eyes. He could not but feel the demand of those eyes for fine honour in the man on whom they rested in love. She was to him the white flower sprung of the truth and fearlessness, as well as the grace, of long descended chivalry, and who must not be associated with anything base. He had never before fully faced his Répentigny impersonation in the aspect of a falsity to her. Now, after his direct lie to her, self-contempt threatened to altogether overwhelm him.
He mechanically went on to Paris, whither Dominique had gone before to secure his lodging. The evening of his arrival was spent in grief.
"The fault is mine, but why?" he asked himself with impatient gloom. "Why has Providence so unfairly divided the honours and the guilt of life? Why are there rich and poor? Why good and bad? Why should an unfortunate like me, who has meant only well, be entangled in such a mesh of accidents? Why were my eyes designed but to see, my breast to love, my Cyrène, at such frightful cost?"