This distressing question again led René's mind to ideas from which he turned instinctively. Basilio's famous phrase--'Slander, slander--some is sure to stick'--expresses one of the saddest and most indisputable truths concerning the human heart. René would, it is true, have despised himself for doubting Suzanne after their reconciliation, but every suspicion, even a groundless one, leaves behind it some poisonous remnant of distrust, and had he dared to look into the very depths of his soul he would have recognised that fact in the unhealthy curiosity he felt to learn from Claude what reasons had led him to make his lying accusation. This curiosity, the reminiscences of a long friendship, and a kind of fear of the man who, by his age alone, had always had an advantage over him--all tended to lessen the anger of the wounded lover. He tried to work himself up to the same degree of fury that had possessed him on leaving Colette's dressing-room, but he was not successful. Like all who know themselves to be weak, he wished to rear an insurmountable barrier between Claude and himself at once, and when Larcher made his appearance at nine o'clock, and held out his hand in friendly greeting, the poet kept his own hand in his pocket.
The two men stood for a moment facing each other, both very pale. Claude, though tanned by his travels, looked thin and careworn, and his eyes blazed at the insult offered him. René knew to what lengths Larcher's anger would lead him, and expected to see the hand he had refused raised to strike a blow. But Claude's will was stronger than his offended pride, and he spoke in a voice that trembled with suppressed passion.
'Vincy, do not tempt me. You are only a child, and it is my duty to think for both of us. Come, come! Listen, René--I know all. Do you understand? All--yes, all. I arrived yesterday. Your sister told me that you were angry with me, and a good many other things that opened my eyes. Your silence had frightened me. I thought that you had betrayed me with Colette. Fool that she is! Fortunately she hadn't the sense to guess that there was my vulnerable point. On leaving here I went to her house. I found her alone. She told me what she had done--what she had told you, and gloried in it, the hussy. Then I did what was right.' Here he began to march up and down the room, absorbed in recollections of the scene he described and almost oblivious of the poet's presence. 'I beat her--beat her like a madman. It did me good. I flung her to the ground and rained blow upon blow until she cried "Mercy! mercy!" I could have killed her--and taken a delight in it. How beautiful she looked, too, with her hair all tumbling about and her dress hanging in shreds where I had torn it from her snowy shoulders. Then she grovelled at my feet, but I was relentless, and left the house. She can show the marks on her body to her next lover if she likes, and tell him from whom she got them. How it relieves one to be a brute sometimes!' Then, suddenly stopping before René, he said, 'And all because she had touched you. Yes or no,' he cried, in his same angry tone, 'is it on account of what this jade told you that you are angry with me?'