“Good-morning, Baron, for it is past midnight, my dear fellow.  What the devil are your doing here?  You are airing yourself under a pleasant drizzle.  That is not wholesome at our time of life.  Will you let me give you a little piece of advice?  Let each of us go home; for, between you and me, you will not see the candle in the window.”

The last words made the Baron suddenly aware that he was sixty-three, and that his cloak was wet.

“Who on earth told you—?” he began.

“Valerie, of course, our Valerie, who means henceforth to be my Valerie.  We are even now, Baron; we will play off the tie when you please.  You have nothing to complain of; you know, I always stipulated for the right of taking my revenge; it took you three months to rob me of Josepha; I took Valerie from you in—­We will say no more about that.  Now I mean to have her all to myself.  But we can be very good friends, all the same.”

“Crevel, no jesting,” said Hulot, in a voice choked by rage.  “It is a matter of life and death.”

“Bless me, is that how you take it!—­Baron, do you not remember what you said to me the day of Hortense’s marriage:  ’Can two old gaffers like us quarrel over a petticoat?  It is too low, too common.  We are Regence, we agreed, Pompadour, eighteenth century, quite the Marechal Richelieu, Louis XV., nay, and I may say, Liaisons dangereuses!”

Crevel might have gone on with his string of literary allusions; the Baron heard him as a deaf man listens when he is but half deaf.  But, seeing in the gaslight the ghastly pallor of his face, the triumphant Mayor stopped short.  This was, indeed, a thunderbolt after Madame Olivier’s asservations and Valerie’s parting glance.

“Good God!  And there are so many other women in Paris!” he said at last.

“That is what I said to you when you took Josepha,” said Crevel.

“Look here, Crevel, it is impossible.  Give me some proof.—­Have you a key, as I have, to let yourself in?”

And having reached the house, the Baron put the key into the lock; but the gate was immovable; he tried in vain to open it.

“Do not make a noise in the streets at night,” said Crevel coolly.  “I tell you, Baron, I have far better proof than you can show.”

“Proofs! give me proof!” cried the Baron, almost crazy with exasperation.

“Come, and you shall have them,” said Crevel.

And in obedience to Valerie’s instructions, he led the Baron away towards the quay, down the Rue Hillerin-Bertin.  The unhappy Baron walked on, as a merchant walks on the day before he stops payment; he was lost in conjectures as to the reasons of the depravity buried in the depths of Valerie’s heart, and still believed himself the victim of some practical joke.  As they crossed the Pont Royal, life seemed to him so blank, so utterly a void, and so out of joint from his financial difficulties, that he was within an ace of yielding to the evil prompting that bid him fling Crevel into the river and throw himself in after.