Then he made up his mind to rush after her, if
she crossed the threshold of the commissariat, to implore her, to beat
her if necessary, so as to compel her to hold her tongue. At a street
corner she looked at a policeman who came along, and Laurent trembled
with fright, lest she should stop and speak to him. In terror of being
arrested on the spot if he showed himself, he hid in a doorway.
This excursion proved perfect agony. While his wife basked in the sun
on the pavement, trailing her skirt with nonchalance and impudence,
shameless and unconcerned, he followed behind her, pale and shuddering,
repeating that it was all over, that he would be unable to save himself
and would be guillotined. Each step he saw her take, seemed to him a
step nearer punishment. Fright gave him a sort of blind conviction, and
the slightest movement of the young woman added to his certainty. He
followed her, he went where she went, as a man goes to the scaffold.
Suddenly on reaching the former Place Saint-Michel, Therese
advanced towards a cafe that then formed the corner of the Rue
Monsieur-le-Prince. There she seated herself in the centre of a group of
women and students, at one of the tables on the pavement, and familiarly
shook hands with all this little crowd.
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