Laurent paused at the door. Already Dobouziez had sat down in front of his desk and was going back to work as if nothing important had happened, as if he had simply been paying off a discharged clerk.
His attitude froze Laurent, and recalled him to the feeling of the situation. For several seconds he was plunged in grief, and foreswore life; then he came to his senses.
"Very well! So be it!" he thought. "It is just as well that we separate!"
He left the room. In the street a nervous gaiety took possession of him, in reaction. Was he not free, emancipated, his own master? No more college, no more control, no more guardians. And, especially, no more remorse, no more jealousy, even no more love. He believed her to be Madame Béjard now, detached her forever from Gina. He rejected his cousin as if he were throwing away a flower polluted by a slug.
"And to think that the Dobouziez' think that they are punishing me in throwing me upon my own resources!" he repeated excitedly. "And that brute of a Saint-Fardier! If I had not been taken by storm by the news I would have strangled him on the spot!"
And in going along the ditch: "You speak in vain, oh, greasy, putrid water! It is the past, my past, that wallows at the bottom of your oily urn. It is a cadaver, a chrysalis that you withhold! Your nymph has become Mme. Béjard! Cloaca for cloaca, oh, disastrous ditch, you seem less disgusting to me than certain marriages!"
