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Agesilaus took two steps toward the door, then turned around.

“Wait a moment,” he said, apparently thinking.

“What? What is it? Say something, you’re killing me.”

“Maybe it’s the fellow who ran after me.”

“A man ran after you?”

“Yes.”

“What for?”

“To ask me for the key on your behalf.”

“What key, you idiot? Tell me, for God’s sake, tell me!”

“The key to your apartment.”

“You gave the key to my apartment to a stranger?” Maurice shrieked, seizing the officieux by the collar with his two hands.

“But it wasn’t a stranger, monsieur—it was one of your friends.”

“Oh, right, one of my friends? So it must have been Lorin, then. That’s it, she’s gone out with Lorin.”

Maurice tried to smile through his sick feeling; he mopped his forehead, bathed in sweat, with his handkerchief.

“No, no, no, monsieur, it’s not Lorin!” said Agesilaus. “Cripes! I reckon I know Monsieur Lorin pretty well by now!”

“Then who is it?”

“You know, citizen, that man, the one who came round that day …”

“What day?”

“The day you were so down in the dumps and he took you off and you came back gay as a lark.”

Agesilaus had registered all this. Maurice stared at him in fright. A shiver ran through his entire body. After a long silence, he said:

“Dixmer?”

“Oh, yes, heavens, I think that’s it, citizen,” said the officieux.

Maurice tottered and fell backward into a chair. His eyes clouded over and he nearly blacked out.

“Oh, my God!” he murmured.

When he opened his eyes again, he looked straight at the bouquet of violets, forgotten, or rather left behind, by Geneviève. He fell upon it, kissed the violets, and then suddenly took in the space where they had been placed.

“Ah, it’s all becoming clear now,” he said. “These violets … her last farewell!”

Maurice spun around then, and only then did he notice that the chest was only half-packed, the rest of the linen lying on the floor or in the cupboard hanging open. No doubt the linen on the floor had fallen from Geneviève’s hands when she’d sighted Dixmer.

He could see that moment in all its gruesome detail. The scene loomed up before him, vivid and terrible, between these four walls that had previously witnessed so much happiness. Until that moment, Maurice had sat defeated, crushed. Now his arousal was fearful, the young man’s surging anger terrifying.

He shot up, closed the window, grabbed two pistols that were lying on his desk fully loaded for the journey, checked their caps, and, seeing that they were in working order, shoved the pistols in his pockets.

Then he slipped two rolls of louis into his purse—despite his patriotism, he had judged it prudent to keep the louis in the bottom of a drawer—then he grabbed his saber in its scabbard and said:

“Agesilaus, you are quite fond of me, I believe; you’ve served my father and me for fifteen years.”

“Yes, citizen,” said the officieux, seized with fright at the sight of a marblelike pallor and nervous tremor he had never remarked in his master before, his master passing rightly for the most fearless and unshakable of men. “Yes, what are you asking me to do?”

“Listen! If the woman who was living here …”

He broke off, his voice trembling so much as he said these words that he could not go on.

“If she comes back,” he resumed after a moment, “let her in. Close the door behind her. Take this rifle, place yourself on the stairs, and, on your head, on your life, on your soul, do not let anyone in. If they try to break down the door, defend it. Shoot! Kill! Kill! And don’t worry, Agesilaus, I’ll take the blame.”

The young man’s tone, his vehement assurance galvanized Agesilaus.

“Not only will I kill,” he said, “but I’d get myself killed for citizeness Geneviève.”

“Thank you.… Now listen. I loathe this apartment now. I never want to climb back up those stairs again—not until I’ve found her. If she is able to escape, if she comes back, stick that great big Japanese vase at your window, filled with the daisies she loved so much. That’s in the day. At night, put a lantern there instead. Every time I go past the end of the street, I’ll get the message;