in a burst
of fury which at any rate proved the extravagance of his love. It was
not like a paltry squabble. There was rapture in being so crushed.
Little, fair-haired, slim, and slender men loved to torment women; they
could only reign over poor, weak creatures; it pleased them to have some
ground for believing that they were men. The tyranny of love was their
one chance of asserting their power. She did not know why she had put
herself at the mercy of fair hair. Such men as de Marsay, Montriveau,
and Vandenesse, dark-haired and well grown, had a ray of sunlight in
their eyes."

It was a storm of epigrams. Her speeches, like bullets, came hissing
past his ears. Every word that Diane hurled at him was triple-barbed;
she humiliated, stung, and wounded him with an art that was all her own,
as half a score of savages can torture an enemy bound to a stake.

"You are mad!" he cried at last, at the end of his patience, and out
he went in God knows what mood. He drove as if he had never handled
the reins before, locked his wheels in the wheels of other vehicles,
collided with the curbstone in the Place Louis-Quinze, went he knew not
whither. The horse, left to its own devices, made a bolt for the stable
along the Quai d'Orsay; but as he turned into the Rue de l'Universite,
Josephin appeared to stop the runaway.

"You cannot go home, sir," the old man said, with a scared face; "they
have come with a warrant to arrest you."

Victurnien thought that he had been arrested on the criminal charge,
albeit there had not been time for the public prosecutor to receive
his instructions. He had forgotten the matter of the bills of exchange,
which had been stirred up again for some days past in the form of orders
to pay, brought by the officers of the court with accompaniments in
the shape of bailiffs, men in possession, magistrates, commissaries,
policemen, and other representatives of social order. Like most guilty
creatures, Victurnien had forgotten everything but his crime.

"It is all over with me," he cried.

"No, M. le Comte, drive as fast as you can to the Hotel du Bon la
Fontaine, in the Rue de Grenelle. Mlle. Armande is waiting there for
you, the horses have been put in, she will take you with her."

Victurnien, in his trouble, caught like a drowning man at the branch
that came to his hand; he rushed off to the inn, reached the place, and
flung his arms about his aunt. Mlle. Armande cried as if her heart would
break; any