The cat looked at him with great round eyes that were diabolical in their fixedness.

He wondered what these eyes which never left him, wanted; and he ended by having regular fits of terror, and imagining all sorts of ridiculous things.
When at table--at no matter what moment, in the middle of a quarrel or of a long silence--he happened, all at once, to look round, and perceive Francois examining him with a harsh, implacable stare, he turned pale and lost his head.

He was on the point of saying to the cat: "Heh! Why don't you speak?
Tell me what it is you want with me." When he could crush his paw or tail, he did so in affrighted joy, the mewing of the poor creature giving him vague terror, as though he heard a human cry of pain.

Laurent, in fact, was afraid of Francois, particularly since the latter passed his time on the knees of the impotent old lady, as if in the centre of an impregnable fortress, whence he could with impunity set his eyes on his enemy.

The murderer of Camille established a vague resemblance between this irritated animal and the paralysed woman, saying to himself that the cat, like Madame Raquin, must know about the crime and would denounce him, if he ever found a tongue.
At last, one night, Francois looked at Laurent so fixedly, that the latter, irritated to the last pitch, made up his mind to put an end to the annoyance.