upon me. I believed you to be a real good tippler, and wished you to
become my chaplain as soon as I could set up my own establishment."

However, M. Coignard did drink all that the bottle contained, and
Catherine, inclining to me, whispered in my ear:

"Jacques, I feel that I shall never love anyone but you."

These words, spoken by a really fine woman clad in no other wrapper
than a chemise, troubled me to the extreme. Catherine ended by
fuddling me entirely, by making me drink out of her own glass, an
action passing unobserved in the confusion of a supper which had
overheated the heads of us all.

M. d'Anquetil knocked off the neck of a bottle on the corner of the
table and filled our bumpers; from this moment on, I cannot give a
reliable account of what was said and done around me. One incident I
remember: Catherine treacherously emptying her glass into her
lover's neck, between the nape and the collar of his coat; and M.
d'Anquetil retorting by pouring the contents of two or three bottles
over the girl. Wearing nothing beyond her chemise, it changed
Catherine into a kind of mythological figure of a humid species like
nymphs and naiads. She cried herself into a rage and twisted in
convulsions.

At that very moment, in the silence of the night, we heard knocks at
the house door. We became suddenly motionless and dumb, like people
bewitched.

The knocks soon redoubled in strength and frequency. M. d'Anquetil