him back to the right path. Ah! if I were in your place, I would split
that press open with a hatchet. I would make a famous bonfire with all
the insults to the good God which it contains!"

She had planted herself before the immense press and was measuring it
with her fiery glance, as if to take it by assault, to sack it, to
destroy it, in spite of the withered and fragile thinness of her
eighty years. Then, with a gesture of ironical disdain:

"If, even with his science, he could know everything!"

Clotilde remained for a moment absorbed in thought, her gaze lost in
vacancy. Then she said in an undertone, as if speaking to herself:

"It is true, he cannot know everything. There is always something else
below. That is what irritates me; that is what makes us quarrel: for I
cannot, like him, put the mystery aside. I am troubled by it, so much
so that I suffer cruelly. Below, what wills and acts in the shuddering
darkness, all the unknown forces--"

Her voice had gradually become lower and now dropped to an indistinct
murmur.

Then Martine, whose face for a moment past had worn a somber
expression, interrupted in her turn:

"If it was true, however, mademoiselle, that monsieur would be damned
on account of those villainous papers, tell me, ought we to let it
happen? For my part, look you, if he were to tell me to throw myself
down from the terrace, I would shut my eyes and throw myself, because