Then, without further warning, he exploded.
His nervous, sinewy hand clenched itself and fell with a crash upon the table, overturning a flagon and sending a lake of wine across the board, to trickle over at a dozen points and form in puddles at the feet of Valerie.

Startled, they all watched him, mademoiselle the most startled of the three.
"Madame," he thundered, "I have been receiving dancing-lessons at your hands for long enough.

It is time, I think, we did a little ordinary walking, else shall we get no farther along the road I mean to go and that is the road to Paris with mademoiselle for company." "Monsieur, monsieur!" cried the startled Marquise, placing herself intrepidly before him; and Marius trembled for her, for so wild did the man seem that he almost feared he might strike her.
"I have heard enough," he blazed.

"Not another word from any here in Condillac! I'll take this lady with me now, at once; and if any here raises a finger to resist me, as Heaven is my witness, it will be the last resistance he will ever offer any man.

Let a hand be laid upon me, or a sword bared before my eyes, and I swear, madame, that I'll come back and burn this dunghill of rebellion to the ground." In the blindness of his passion all his fine keenness was cast to the wind, his all-observing watchfulness was smothered in the cloud of anger that oppressed his brain.