In a second, a furious, gesticulating, vociferating group formed round him. An old gentleman especially, an old gentleman wearing a big round decoration and big white moustaches, seemed exasperated. He kept on repeating:

‘Good heavens, when you’re as clumsy as that, you stay at home! You don’t come killing people in the street, when you don’t know how to ride a horse.’

But four men appeared, carrying the old woman. She seemed dead, with her yellow face and her bonnet to one side, all grey with dust.

‘Carry that woman to a chemist’s,’ ordered the old gentleman, ‘and let us go to a police station.’

Hector, between two policemen, began his journey. A third held his horse. A crowd followed: and suddenly the carriage appeared. His wife rushed forward, the servant lost her head, the babies squalled. He explained that he’d be home soon, that he had knocked a woman over, that it was nothing. And his distracted family moved off.

At the police station, the explanation was short. He gave his name, Hector de Gribelin, attaché to the Minister of the Navy, and they awaited news of the injured woman. A policeman, sent to get information returned. She had regained consciousness, but she was suffering frightfully inside, she said; she was a charwoman, aged sixty-five, and called Madame Simon.

When he knew that she wasn’t dead, Hector took hope again, and promised to provide for the expenses of her cure. Then he ran to the chemist’s.

A crowd was stationed before the door: the old wife, sunk in an arm-chair, was groaning, her hands hanging, her face stupid. None of her limbs were broken, but they feared an internal lesion.

Hector spoke to her:

‘Are you suffering much?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Whereabouts?’

‘It’s like a fire I have in my innards.’

A doctor came up:

‘You are the cause of the accident, sir?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘This woman will have to be sent to a nursing home: I know one where they will take her for six francs a day. Would you like me to arrange it?’

Hector, delighted, thanked him, and went back home comforted.

His wife was waiting for him in tears: he calmed her.

‘It’s nothing. This Simon woman is better already: in three days it will not show at all. I have sent her to a nursing home. It is nothing.’

Coming out of his office, next day, he went to inquire for Madame Simon. He found her busy eating thick soup with an air of satisfaction.