The letter and will made by Florent disclosed to her the threat of a
fatal duel suspended over the head which was the dearest to her. So she
had driven to a tragical encounter the only being whom she loved.... The
disappointment of the heart in which palpitated the wild energies of a
bestial atavism was so sudden, so acute, so dolorous, that she uttered an
inarticulate cry, leaning upon her brother's desk, and, in the face of
those sheets of paper which had revealed so much, she repeated:

"He is going to fight a duel! He!.... And I am the cause!".... Then,
returning the letters and the will to the drawer, she closed it and rose,
saying aloud:

"No. It shall not be. I will prevent it, if I have to cast myself
between them. I do not wish it! I do not wish it!"

It was easy to utter such words. But the execution of them was less
easy. Lydia knew it, for she had no sooner uttered that vow than she
wrung her hands in despair--those weak hands which Madame Steno compared
in one of her letters to the paws of a monkey, the fingers were so supple
and so long--and she uttered this despairing cry: "But how?".... which so
many criminals have uttered before the issue, unexpected and fatal to
them, of their shrewdest calculations. The poet has sung it in the words
which relate the story of all our faults, great and small:

"The gods are just, and of our pleasant vices
Make instruments to plague us."

It is necessary that the belief in the equity of an incomprehensible
judge be well grounded in us, for the strongest minds are struck by a