Chapter
7
The Treatise of the NeedleIT IS FOUR O'CLOCK in the morning. Isidore has not returned to the Lycee Janson. He has no intention of returning before the end of the war of extermination which he has declared against Lupin. This much he swore to himself under his breath, while his friends drove off with him, all faint and bruised, in a cab.
A mad oath! An absurd and illogical war! What can he do, a single, unarmed stripling, against that phenomenon of energy and strength? On which side is he to attack him? He is unassailable. Where to wound him? He is invulnerable. Where to get at him? He is inaccessible.
Four o'clock in the morning. Isidore has again accepted his schoolfellow's hospitality. Standing before the chimney in his bedroom, with his elbows flat on the mantel-shelf and
