“In any case, sir, you are not very civil,” observed Saint-Loup to the journalist, still with a courteous suavity, in the deliberate manner of a man judging retrospectively the rights and wrongs of an incident that is already closed.

At that moment I saw Saint-Loup raise his arm vertically above his head as if he had been making a signal to someone whom I could not see, or like the conductor of an orchestra, and indeed⁠—without any greater transition than when, at a simple wave of the baton, in a symphony or a ballet, violent rhythms succeed a graceful andante⁠—after the courteous words that he had just uttered he brought down his hand with a resounding smack upon the journalist’s cheek.