He squints into the sky where he saw the silver object disappear. He is more concerned with the being and what it said than the fact that its insult was directed at him.
It has vanished between Libra and Scorpio. Combeferre reflects that Prouvaire would find poetic significance in this.
He runs the rest of the way home. Immediately upon arrival, he throws a stack of anatomical textbooks onto his desk, sits down, and begins leafing through them. He can find nothing remotely resembling the strange being in any. He remembers, though, a lecture at the École Polytechnique, at which a professor (none of the few attending actually knew what he taught; Combeferre assumed that his own students had been sensible enough to avoid the lecture) showed plans of craft similar to the object that had descended on Combeferre, and to illustrate who would use them, a tall, gray-green creature, identical to that which insulted him.
The other students were tolerant of the professor, although he seemed half mad. This was until he said that the being and its craft came from a distant planet. Then they all left, excepting Combeferre. He denies nothing, so everything is possible for him.
