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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Crime of the Boulevard, by Jules Claretie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Crime of the Boulevard
+
+Author: Jules Claretie
+
+Translator: Mrs. Carlton A. Kingsbury
+
+Release Date: October 11, 2010 [EBook #34058]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRIME OF THE BOULEVARD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Darleen Dove, Ernest Schaal, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             _The Crime of
+                             The Boulevard_
+
+
+                             [Decoration]
+
+
+                           By JULES CLARETIE
+                      Member of the French Academy
+
+
+                             [Decoration]
+
+
+                             Translated by
+                       MRS. CARLTON A. KINGSBURY
+
+
+                             [Decoration]
+
+
+                         R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
+              Eighteen East Seventeenth Street :: NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                            Copyright, 1897
+                                   BY
+                         R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+                       The Crime of the Boulevard
+
+
+
+
+                                  THE
+                         CRIME OF THE BOULEVARD.
+
+                               CHAPTER I.
+
+
+"WHERE does Bernardet live?"
+
+"At the passage to the right--Yes, that house which you see with the
+grating and the garden behind it."
+
+The man to whom a passer-by had given this information hurried away in
+the direction pointed out; although gasping for breath, he tried to run,
+in order to more quickly reach the little house at the end of the
+passage of the Elysée des Beaux Arts. This passage, a sort of
+cul-de-sac, on either side of which were black buildings, strange old
+houses, and dilapidated storehouses, opened upon a boulevard filled with
+life and movement; with people promenading; with the noise of tramways;
+with gaiety and light.
+
+The man wore the dress and had the bearing of a workman. He was very
+short, very fat, and his bald head was bared to the warm October rain.
+He was a workman, in truth, who labored in his concierge lodge, making
+over and mending garments for his neighbors, while his wife looked after
+the house, swept the staircases, and complained of her lot.
+
+Mme. Moniche found life hard and disagreeable, and regretted that it had
+not given her what it promised when, at eighteen, and very pretty, she
+had expected something better than to watch beside a tailor bent over
+his work in a concierge's lodge. Into her life a tragedy had suddenly
+precipitated itself, and Mme. Moniche found, that day, something to
+brighten up her afternoon. Entering a moment before, the apartment
+occupied by M. Rovère, she had found her lodger lying on his back, his
+eyes fixed, his arms flung out, with a gash across his throat!
+
+M. Rovère had lived alone in the house for many years, receiving a few
+mysterious persons. Mme. Moniche looked after his apartment, entering by
+using her own key whenever it was necessary; and her lodger had given
+her permission to come there at any time to read the daily papers.
+
+Mme. Moniche hurried down the stairs.
+
+"M. Rovère is dead! M. Rovère has been murdered! His throat has been
+cut! He has been assassinated!" And, pushing her husband out of the
+door, she exclaimed:
+
+"The police! Go for the police!"
+
+This word "police" awakened in the tailor's mind, not the thought of the
+neighboring Commissary, but the thought of the man to whom he felt that
+he ought to appeal, whom he ought to consult. This man was the good
+little M. Bernardet, who passed for a man of genius of his kind, at the
+Sureté, and for whom Moniche had often repaired coats and rehemmed
+trousers.
+
+From the mansion in the Boulevard de Clichy, where Moniche lived, to M.
+Bernardet's house, was but a short distance, and the concierge knew the
+way very well, as he had often been there. But the poor man was so
+stupefied, so overwhelmed, by the sudden appearance of his wife in his
+room, by the brutal revelation which came to him as the blow of a fist,
+by the horrible manner of M. Rovère's death, that he lost his head.
+Horrified, breathless, he asked the first passer-by where Bernardet
+lived, and he ran as fast as he could in the direction pointed out.
+
+Arrived at the grating, the worthy man, a little confused, stopped
+short. He was very strongly moved. It seemed to him that he had been
+cast into the agony of a horrible nightmare. An assassination in the
+house! A murder in the Boulevard de Clichy in broad daylight, just over
+his head, while he was quietly repairing a vest!
+
+He stood looking at the house without ringing. M. Bernardet was, no
+doubt, breakfasting with his family, for it was Sunday, and the police
+officer, meeting Moniche the evening before, had said to him:
+"To-morrow is my birthday."
+
+Moniche hesitated a moment, then he rang the bell. He was not kept
+waiting; the sudden opening of the grating startled him; he pushed back
+the door and entered. He crossed a little court, at the end of which was
+a pavilion; he mounted the three steps and was met on the threshold by a
+little woman, as rosy and fresh as an apple, who, napkin in hand, gayly
+saluted him.
+
+"Eh, Monsieur Moniche!"
+
+It was Mme. Bernardet, a Burgundian woman, about thirty-five years of
+age, trim and coquettish, who stepped back so that the tailor could
+enter.
+
+"What is the matter, M. Moniche?"
+
+Poor Moniche rolled his frightened eyes around and gasped out: "I must
+speak to M. Bernardet."
+
+"Nothing easier," said the little woman. "M. Bernardet is in the garden.
+Yes, he is taking advantage of the beautiful day; he is taking a
+group"----
+
+"What group?"
+
+"You know very well, photography is his passion. Come with me."
+
+And Mme. Bernardet pointed to the end of the corridor, where an open
+door gave a glimpse of the garden at the rear of the house. M.
+Bernardet, the Inspector, had posed his three daughters with their
+mother about a small table, on which coffee had been served.
+
+"I had just gone in to get my napkin, when I heard you ring," Mme.
+Bernardet said.
+
+Bernardet made a sign to Moniche not to advance. He was as plump and as
+gay as his wife. His moustache was red, his double chin smooth-shaven
+and rosy, his eyes had a sharp, cunning look, his head was round and
+closely cropped.
+
+The three daughters, clothed alike in Scotch plaid, were posing in front
+of a photographic apparatus which stood on a tripod. The eldest was
+about twelve years of age; the youngest a child of five. They were all
+three strangely alike.
+
+M. Bernardet, in honor of his birthday, was taking a picture of his
+daughters. The ferret who, from morning till night, tracked robbers and
+malefactors into their hiding places, was taking his recreation in his
+damp garden. The sweet idyl of this hidden life repaid him for his
+unceasing investigations, for his trouble and fatiguing man-hunts
+through Paris.
+
+"There!" he said, clapping the cap over the lens. "That is all! Go and
+play now, my dears. I am at your service, Moniche."
+
+He shut up his photographic apparatus, pulling out the tripod from the
+deep soil in which it was imbedded, while his daughters joyously ran to
+their mother. The young girls stood gazing at Moniche with their great
+blue eyes, piercing and clear. Bernardet turned to look at him, and at
+once divined that something had happened.
+
+"You are as white as your handkerchief, Moniche," he said.
+
+"Ah! Monsieur Bernardet! It is enough to terrify one! There has been a
+murder in the house."
+
+"A murder?"
+
+His face, which had been so gay and careless, suddenly took on a strange
+expression, at once tense and serious; the large blue eyes shone as with
+an inward fire.
+
+"A murder, yes, Monsieur Bernardet. M. Rovère--you did not know him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He was an original--a recluse. And now he has been assassinated. My
+wife went to his room to read the papers"----
+
+Bernardet interrupted him brusquely:
+
+"When did it happen?"
+
+"Ah! _Dame!_ Monsieur, I do not know. All I know is my wife found the
+body still warm. She was not afraid; she touched it."
+
+"Still warm!"
+
+These words struck Bernardet. He reflected a moment, then he said:
+
+"Come; let us go to your house."
+
+Then, struck with a sudden idea, he added: "Yes, I will take it."
+
+He unfastened his camera from the tripod. "I have three plates left
+which I can use," he said.
+
+Mme. Bernardet, who was standing at a little distance, with the children
+clinging to her skirts, perceived that the concierge had brought
+important news. Bernardet's smiling face had suddenly changed; the
+expression became serious, his glance fixed and keen.
+
+"Art thou going with him?" Mme. Bernardet asked, as she saw her husband
+buckle on a leather bandolier.
+
+"Yes!" he answered.
+
+"Ah! Mon Dieu! my poor Sunday, and this evening--can we not go to the
+little theatre at Montmartre this evening?"
+
+"I do not know," he replied.
+
+"You promised! The poor children! You promised to take them to see
+Closerie des Genets!"
+
+"I cannot tell; I do not know--I will see," the little man said. "My
+dear Moniche, to-day is my fortieth birthday. I promised to take them to
+the theatre--but I must go with you." Turning to his wife, he added:
+"But I will come back as soon as I can. Come, Moniche, let us hasten to
+your M. Rovère."
+
+He kissed his wife on the forehead, and each little girl on both cheeks,
+and, strapping the camera in the bandolier, he went out, followed by the
+tailor. As they walked quickly along Moniche kept repeating: "Still
+warm; yes, Monsieur Bernardet, still warm!"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+
+BERNARDET was quite an original character. Among the agents, some of
+whom were very odd, and among the devoted subalterns, this little man,
+with his singular mind, with his insatiable curiosity, reading anything
+he could lay his hands on, passed for a literary person. His chief
+sometimes laughingly said to him:
+
+"Bernardet, take care! You have literary ambitions. You will begin to
+dream of writing for the papers."
+
+"Oh, no, Monsieur Morel--but what would you?--I am simply amusing
+myself."
+
+This was true. Bernardet was a born hunter. With a superior education,
+he might have become a savant, a frequenter of libraries, passing his
+life in working on documents and in deciphering manuscripts. The son of
+a dairyman; brought up in a Lancastrian school; reading with avidity all
+the daily papers; attracted by everything mysterious which happened in
+Paris; having accomplished his military duty, he applied for admission
+to the Police Bureau, as he would have embarked for the New World, for
+Mexico, or for Tonquin, in order to travel in a new country. Then he
+married, so that he might have, in his checkered existence, which was
+dangerous and wearying,--a haven of rest, a fireside of peaceful joy.
+
+So he lived a double life--tracking malefactors like a bloodhound, and
+cultivating his little garden. There he devoured old books, for which he
+had paid a few sous at some book stall; he read and pasted in old, odd
+leaves, re-bound them himself, and cut clippings from papers. He filled
+his round, bald head with a mass of facts which he investigated,
+classified, put into their proper place, to be brought forth as occasion
+demanded.
+
+He was an inquisitive person, a very inquisitive person, indeed.
+Curiosity filled his life. He performed with pleasure the most fatiguing
+and repulsive tasks that fall to a police officer's lot. They satisfied
+the original need of his nature, and permitted him to see everything, to
+hear everything, to penetrate into the most curious mysteries. To-day,
+in a dress suit with white tie, carelessly glancing over the crowds at
+the opera, to discover the thieves who took opera glasses, which they
+sent to accomplices in Germany to be sold; to-morrow, going in ragged
+clothes to arrest a murderer in some cutthroat den in the Glacière.
+
+M. Bernardet had taken possession of the office of the most powerful
+bankers, seized their books and made them go away with him in a cab. He
+had followed, by order, the intrigues of more than one fine lady, who
+owed to him her salvation. What if M. Bernardet had thought fit to
+speak? But he never spoke, and reporters came out worsted from any
+attempt at an interview with him. "An interview is silver, but silence
+is gold," he was wont to say, for he was not a fool.
+
+He had assisted at spiritual séances and attended secret meetings of
+Anarchists. He had occupied himself with occult matters, consulting the
+magicians of chance, and he had at his tongue's end the list of
+conspirators. He knew the true names of the famous Greeks who shuffled
+cards as one scouts about under an assumed name. The gambling hells were
+all familiar to him; he knew the churches in whose dark corners
+associates assembled to talk of _affairs_, who did not wish to be seen
+in beer shops nor spied upon in cabarets.
+
+Of the millions in Paris, he knew the secrets of this whirlpool of
+humanity.
+
+Oh! if he had ever become prefect of police, he would have studied his
+Paris, not at a distance, looking up statistics in books, or from the
+windows of a police bureau, but in the streets, in wretched lodgings, in
+hovels, in the asylums of misery and of crime. But Bernardet was not
+ambitious. Life suited him very well as he found it. His good wife had
+brought to him a small dower, and Bernardet, content with this poor
+little fortune, found that he had all the power he wanted--the power,
+when occasion demanded, of putting his hand on the shoulder of a former
+Minister and of taking a murderer by the throat.
+
+One day a financier, threatened with imprisonment in Mazas, pleased him
+very much. Bernardet entered his office to arrest him. He did not wish
+to have a row in the bank. The police officer and banker found
+themselves alone, face to face, in a very small room, a private office,
+with heavy curtains and a thick carpet, which stifled all noise.
+
+"Fifty thousand francs if you will let me escape," said the banker.
+
+"Monsieur le Comte jests"----
+
+"A hundred thousand!"
+
+"The pleasantry is very great, but it is a pleasantry."
+
+Then the Count, very pale, said: "And what if I crack your head?"
+
+"My brother officers are waiting for me," Bernardet simply replied.
+"They know that our interview does not promise to be a long one, and
+this last proposition, which I wish to forget like the others, would
+only aggravate, I believe, if it became known, M. le Comte's case."
+
+Two minutes afterward the banker went out, preceding Bernardet, who
+followed him with bared head. The banker said to his employés, in an
+easy tone: "Good-by for the moment, Messieurs, I will return soon."
+
+It was also Bernardet who, visiting the Bank Hauts-Plateaux, said to his
+chief: "Monsieur Morel, something very serious is taking place there."
+
+"What is it, Bernardet?"
+
+"I do not know, but there is a meeting of the bank directors, and
+to-day, I saw two servants carry a man in there in an invalid's chair.
+It was the Baron de Cheylard."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Baron Cheylard, in his quality of ex-Senator of the Second Empire, of
+ex-President of the Council, an ex-Commissioner of Industrial
+Expositions, is Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. Grand Cross--that is
+to say, that he cannot be pursued only after a decision of the Council
+of the Order. And then, you understand--if the Bank of Hauts-Plateaux
+demands the presence of its Vice-president, the Baron of Cheylard,
+paralyzed, half dead"----
+
+"It means that it has need of a thunderbolt?"
+
+"The Grand Cross, Monsieur. They would hesitate to deliver up to us the
+Grand Cross."
+
+"You are right, Bernardet. The bank must be in a bad fix. And you are a
+very keen observer. The mind of a literary man, Bernardet."
+
+"Oh, rather a photographic eye, Monsieur Morel. The habit of using a
+kodak."
+
+Thus Bernardet passed his life in Paris. Capable of amassing a fortune
+in some Tricoche Agency if he had wished to exploit, for his own
+benefit, his keen observing powers, he thought only of doing his duty,
+bringing up his little girls and loving his wife. Mme. Bernardet was
+amazed at the astonishing stories which her husband often related to
+her, and very proud that he was such an able man.
+
+M. Bernardet hurried toward M. Rovère's lodgings and Moniche trotted
+along beside him. As they neared the house they saw that a crowd had
+begun to collect.
+
+"It is known already," Moniche said. "Since I left they have begun"----
+
+"If I enter there," interrupted the officer, "it is all right. You have
+a right to call any one you choose to your aid. But I am not a
+Magistrate. You must go for a Commissary of Police."
+
+"Oh, M. Bernardet," Moniche exclaimed. "You are worth more than all the
+Commissaries put together."
+
+"That does not make it so. A Commissary is a Commissary. Go and hunt for
+one."
+
+"But since you are here"----
+
+"But I am nothing. We must have a magistrate."
+
+"You are not a magistrate, then?"
+
+"I am simply a police spy."
+
+Then he crossed the street.
+
+The neighbors had gathered about the door like a swarm of flies around a
+honey-comb. A rumor had spread about which brought together a crowd
+animated by the morbid curiosity which is aroused in some minds of the
+hint of a mystery, and attracted by that strange magnetism which that
+sinister thing, "a crime," arouses. The women talked in shrill tones,
+inventing strange stories and incredible theories. Some of the common
+people hurried up to learn the news.
+
+At the moment Bernardet came up, followed by the concierge, a coupé
+stopped at the door and a tall man got out, asking:
+
+"Where is M. Morel? I wish to see M. Morel."
+
+The Chief had not yet been advised, and he was not there. But the tall
+young man suddenly recognized Bernardet, and laid hold of him, pulling
+him after him through the half-open door, which Moniche hastened to shut
+against the crowd.
+
+"We must call some officers," Bernardet said to the concierge, "or the
+crowd will push in."
+
+Mme. Moniche was standing at the foot of the staircase, surrounded by
+the lodgers, men and women, to whom she was recounting, for the
+twentieth time, the story of how she had found M. Rovère with his throat
+cut.
+
+"I was going in to read the paper--the story--it is very interesting,
+that story. The moment had come when the Baron had insulted the
+American colonel. M. Rovère said to me only yesterday, poor man: 'I am
+anxious to find out which one will be killed--the colonel or the baron.'
+He will never know! And it is he"----
+
+"Mme. Moniche," interrupted Bernardet, "have you any one whom you can
+send for a Commissary?"
+
+"Any one?"
+
+"Yes," added Moniche. "M. Bernardet needs a magistrate. It is not
+difficult to understand."
+
+"A Commissary?" repeated Mme. Moniche. "That is so. A Commissary; and
+what if I go for the Commissary myself, M. Bernardet?"
+
+"All right, provided you do not let the crowd take the house by assault
+when you open the door."
+
+"Fear nothing," the woman said, happy in having something important to
+do, in relating the horrible news to the Commissary how, when she was
+about to enter the room for the purpose of reading, the----
+
+While she was going toward the door Bernardet slowly mounted the two
+flights of stairs, followed by Moniche and the tall young man who had
+arrived in his coupé at a gallop, in order to get the first news of the
+murder and make a "scoop" for his paper.
+
+The news had traveled fast, and his paper had sent him in haste to get
+all the details of the affair which could be obtained.
+
+The three men reached M. Rovère's door. Moniche unlocked it and stepped
+back, Bernardet, with the reporter at his heels, note book in hand,
+entered the room.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III.
+
+
+NOTHING in the ante-chamber indicated that a tragedy had taken place
+there. There were pictures on the walls, pieces of faïence, some arms of
+rare kinds, Japanese swords and a Malay creese. Bernardet glanced at
+them as he passed by.
+
+"He is in the salon," said the concierge, in a low tone.
+
+One of the folding doors stood open, and, stopping on the threshold, in
+order to take in the entire aspect of the place, Bernardet saw in the
+centre of the room, lying on the floor in a pool of blood, the body of
+M. Rovère, clothed in a long, blue dressing gown, bound at the waist
+with a heavy cord, which lay in coils on the floor, like a serpent. The
+corpse was extended between the two windows, which opened on the
+Boulevard de Clichy, and Bernardet's first thought was that it was a
+miracle that the victim could have met his death in such a horrible
+manner, two steps from the passers-by on the street.
+
+"Whoever struck the blow did it quickly," thought the police officer. He
+advanced softly toward the body, casting his eye upon the inert mass and
+taking in at a glance the smallest objects near it and the most minute
+details. He bent over and studied it thoroughly.
+
+M. Rovère seemed living in his tragic pose. The pale face, with its
+pointed and well-trimmed gray beard, expressed in its fierce immobility
+a sort of menacing anger. This man of about fifty years had evidently
+died cursing some one in his supreme agony. The frightful wound seemed
+like a large red cravat, which harmonized strangely with the
+half-whitened beard, the end of which was wet with blood.
+
+But what struck Bernardet above everything else, arrested his attention,
+and glued him to the spot, was the look, the extraordinary expression in
+the eyes. The mouth was open, as if to cry out, the eyes seemed to
+menace some one, and the lips about to speak.
+
+They were frightful. Those tragic eyes were wide open, as if transfixed
+by fear or fury.
+
+They seemed fathomless, staring, ready to start from their sockets. The
+eyebrows above them were black and bristling. They seemed living eyes in
+that dead face. They told of a final struggle, of some atrocious duel of
+looks and of words. They appeared, in their ferocious immobility, as
+when they gazed upon the murderer, eye to eye, face to face.
+
+Bernardet looked at the hands.
+
+They were contracted and seemed, in some obstinate resistance, to have
+clung to the neck or the clothing of the assassin.
+
+"There ought to be blood under the nails, since he made a struggle,"
+said Bernardet, thinking aloud.
+
+And Paul Rodier, the reporter, hurriedly wrote, "There was blood under
+the nails."
+
+Bernardet returned again and again to the eyes--those wide-open eyes,
+frightful, terrible eyes, which, in their fierce depths, retained
+without doubt the image or phantom of some nightmare of death.
+
+He touched the dead man's hand. The flesh had become cold and _rigor
+mortis_ was beginning to set in.
+
+The reporter saw the little man take from his pocket a sort of rusty
+silver ribbon and unroll it, and heard him ask Moniche to take hold of
+one end of it; this ribbon or thread looked to Paul Rodier like brass
+wire. Bernardet prepared his kodak.
+
+"Above everything else," murmured Bernardet, "let us preserve the
+expression of those eyes."
+
+"Close the shutters. The darkness will be more complete."
+
+The reporter assisted Moniche in order to hasten the work. The shutters
+closed, the room was quite dark, and Bernardet began his task. Counting
+off a few steps, he selected the best place from which to take the
+picture.
+
+"Be kind enough to light the end of the magnesium wire," he said to the
+concierge. "Have you any matches?"
+
+"No, M. Bernardet."
+
+The police office indicated by a sign of the head, a match safe which he
+had noticed on entering the room.
+
+"There are some there."
+
+Bernardet had with one sweeping glance of the eye taken in everything in
+the room; the fauteuils, scarcely moved from their places; the pictures
+hanging on the walls; the mirrors; the bookcases; the cabinets, etc.
+
+Moniche went to the mantelpiece and took a match from the box. It was M.
+Rovère himself who furnished the light by which a picture of his own
+body was taken.
+
+"We could obtain no picture in this room without the magnesium wire,"
+said the agent, as calm while taking a photograph of the murdered man,
+as he had been a short time ago in his garden. "The light is
+insufficient. When I say: 'Go!' Moniche you must light the wire, and I
+will take three or four negatives. Do you understand? Stand there to my
+left. Now! Attention!"
+
+Bernardet took his position and the porter stood ready, match and wire
+in hand, like a gunner who awaits the order to fire.
+
+"Go!" said the agent.
+
+A rapid, clear flame shot up; and suddenly lighted the room.
+The pale face seemed livid, the various objects in the room
+took on a fantastic appearance, in this sort of tempestuous
+apotheosis, and Paul Rodier hastily inscribed on his writing pad:
+"Picturesque--bizarre--marvelous--devilish--suggestive."
+
+"Let us try it again," said M. Bernardet.
+
+For the third time in this weird light the visage of the dead man
+appeared, whiter, more sinister, frightful; the wound deeper, the gash
+redder; and the eyes, those wide-open, fixed, tragic, menacing, speaking
+eyes--eyes filled with scorn, with hate, with terror, with the ferocious
+resistance of a last struggle for life; immovable, eloquent--seemed
+under the fantastic light to glitter, to be alive, to menace some one.
+
+"That is all," said Bernardet, very softly. "If with these three
+negatives"----
+
+He stopped to look around toward the door, which was closed. Someone was
+raining ringing blows on the door, loud and imperative.
+
+"It is the Commissary; open the door, Moniche."
+
+The reporter was busy taking notes, describing the salon, sketching it,
+drawing a plan for his journal.
+
+It was, in fact, the Commissary, who was followed by Mme. Moniche and a
+number of curious persons who had forced their way in when the front
+door was opened.
+
+The Commissary, before entering, took a comprehensive survey of the
+room, and said in a short tone: "Every one must go out. Madame, make all
+these people go out. No one must enter."
+
+There arose an uproar--each one tried to explain his right to be there.
+They were all possessed with an irresistible desire to assist at this
+sinister investigation.
+
+"But we belong to the press!"
+
+"The reporters may enter when they have showed their cards," the
+Commissary replied. "The others--no!" There was a murmur from the crowd.
+
+"The others--no!" repeated the Commissary. He made a sign to two
+officers who accompanied him, and they demanded the reporters' cards of
+identification. The concourse of curious ones rebelled, protested,
+growled and declaimed against the representatives of the press, who took
+precedence everywhere.
+
+"The Fourth Power!" shouted an old man from the foot of the staircase.
+He lived in the house and passed for a correspondent of the Institute.
+He shouted furiously: "When a crime is committed under my very roof, I
+am not even allowed to write an account of it, and strangers, because
+they are reporters, can have the exclusive privilege of writing it up!"
+
+The Commissary did not listen to him, but those who were his
+fellow-sufferers applauded him to the echo. The Commissary shrugged his
+shoulders at the hand-clappings.
+
+"It is but right," he said to the reporter, "that the agents of the
+press should be admitted in preference to any one else. Do you think
+that it is easy to discover a criminal? I have been a journalist, too.
+Yes, at times. In the Quartier, occasionally. I have even written a
+piece for the theatre. But we will not talk of that. Enter! Enter, I beg
+of you--and we shall see"--and elegant, amiable, polished, smiling, he
+looked toward M. Bernardet, and his eyes asked the question: "Where is
+it?"
+
+"Here! M. le Commissaire."
+
+Bernardet stood respectfully in front of his superior officer, as a
+soldier carrying arms, and the Commissary, in his turn, approached the
+body, while the curious ones, quietly kept back by Moniche, formed a
+half circle around the pale and bloody corpse. The Commissary, like
+Bernardet, was struck by the haughty expression of that livid face.
+
+"Poor man!" he said, shaking his head. "He is superb! superb! He reminds
+me of the dead Duke de Guise, in Paul Delaroche's picture. I have seen
+it also at Chantilly, in Gérôme's celebrated picture of _Le Duel de
+Pierrot_."
+
+Possibly in speaking aloud his thoughts, the Commissary was talking so
+that the reporters might hear him. They stood, notebooks in hand,
+taking notes, and Paul Rodier, catching the names, wrote rapidly in his
+book: "M. Desbrière, the learned Commissary, so artistic, so well
+disposed toward the press, was at one time a journalist. He noticed that
+the victim's pale face, with its strong personal characteristics,
+resembled the dead Duke de Guise, in Gérôme's celebrated picture, which
+hangs in the galleries at Chantilly."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+M. DESBRIÈRE now began the investigation. He questioned the porter and
+portress, while he studied the salon in detail. Bernardet roamed about,
+examining at very close range each and every object in the room, as a
+dog sniffs and scents about for a trail.
+
+"What kind of a man was your lodger?" was the first question.
+
+Moniche replied in a tone which showed that he felt that his tenant had
+been accused of something.
+
+"Oh! Monsieur le Commissaire, a very worthy man, I swear it!"
+
+"The best man in the world," added his wife, wiping her eyes.
+
+"I am not inquiring about his moral qualities," M. Desbrière said. "What
+I want to know is, how did he live and whom did he receive?"
+
+"Few people. Very few," the porter answered. "The poor man liked
+solitude. He lived here eight years. He received a few friends, but, I
+repeat, a very small number."
+
+M. Rovère had rented the apartment in 1888, he installed himself in his
+rooms, with his pictures and books. The porter was much astonished at
+the number of pictures and volumes which the new lodger brought. It
+took a long time to settle, as M. Rovère was very fastidious and
+personally superintended the hanging of his canvases and the placing of
+his books. He thought that he must have been an artist, although he said
+that he was a retired merchant. He had heard him say one day that he had
+been Consul to some foreign country--Spain or South America.
+
+He lived quite simply, although they thought that he must be rich. Was
+he a miser? Not at all. Very generous, on the contrary. But, plainly, he
+shunned the world. He had chosen their apartment because it was in a
+retired spot, far from the Parisian boulevards. Four or five years
+before a woman, clothed in black, had come there. A woman who seemed
+still young--he had not seen her face, which was covered with a heavy
+black veil--she had visited M. Rovère quite often. He always accompanied
+her respectfully to the door when she went away. Once or twice he had
+gone out with her in a carriage. No, he did not know her name. M.
+Rovère's life was regulated with military precision. He usually held
+himself upright--of late sickness had bowed him somewhat; he went out
+whenever he was able, going as far as the Bois and back. Then, after
+breakfasting, he shut himself up in his library and read and wrote. He
+passed nearly all of his evenings at home.
+
+"He never made us wait up for him, as he never went to the theatre,"
+said Moniche.
+
+The malady from which he suffered, and which puzzled the physicians, had
+seized him on his return from a Summer sojourn at Aix-les-Bains for his
+health. The neighbors had at once noticed the effect produced by the
+cure. When he went away he had been somewhat troubled with rheumatism,
+but when he returned he was a confirmed sufferer. Since the beginning of
+September he had not been out, receiving no visits, except from his
+doctor, and spending whole days in his easy chair or upon his lounge,
+while Mme. Moniche read the daily papers to him.
+
+"When I say that he saw no one," said the porter, "I make a mistake.
+There was that gentleman"----
+
+And he looked at his wife.
+
+"What gentleman?"
+
+Mme. Moniche shook her head, as if he ought not to answer.
+
+"Of whom do you speak?" repeated the Commissary, looking at both of
+them.
+
+At this moment, Bernardet, standing on the threshold of the library
+adjoining the salon, looked searchingly about the room in which M.
+Rovère ordinarily spent his time, and which he had probably left to meet
+his fate. His ear was as quick to hear as his eye to see, and as he
+heard the question he softly approached and listened for the answer.
+
+"What gentleman? and what did he do?" asked the Commissary, a little
+brusquely, for he noticed a hesitation to reply in both Moniche and his
+wife.
+
+"Well, and what does this mean?"
+
+"Oh, well, Monsieur le Commissaire, it is this--perhaps it means
+nothing," and the concierge went on to tell how, one evening, a very
+fine gentleman, and very polished, moreover, had come to the house and
+asked to see M. Rovère; he had gone to his apartment, and had remained a
+long time. It was, he thought, about the middle of October, and Mme.
+Moniche, who had gone upstairs to light the gas, met the man as he was
+coming out of M. Rovère's rooms, and had noticed at the first glance the
+troubled air of the individual. (Moniche already called the gentleman
+_the 'individual,'_) who was very pale and whose eyes were red.
+
+Then, at some time or other, the individual had made another visit to M.
+Rovère. More than once the portress had tried to learn his name. Up to
+this moment she had not succeeded. One day she asked M. Rovère who it
+was, and he very shortly asked her what business it was of hers. She did
+not insist, but she watched the individual with a vague doubt.
+
+"Instinct. Monsieur; my instinct told me"----
+
+"Enough," interrupted M. Desbrière; "if we had only instinct to guide us
+we should make some famous blunders."
+
+"Oh, it was not only by instinct, Monsieur."
+
+"Ah! ah! let us hear it"----
+
+Bernardet, with his eyes fastened upon Mme. Moniche, did not lose a
+syllable of her story, which her husband occasionally interrupted to
+correct her or to complete a statement, or to add some detail. The
+corpse, with mouth open and fiery, ferocious eyes, seemed also to
+listen.
+
+Mme. Moniche, as we already know, entered M. Rovère's apartment whenever
+she wished. She was his landlady, his reader, his friend. Rovère was
+brusque, but he was good. So it was nothing strange when the woman,
+urged by curiosity, suddenly appeared in his rooms, for him to say: "Ah,
+you here? Is that you? I did not call you." An electric bell connected
+the rooms with the concierge lodge. Usually she would reply: "I thought
+I heard the bell." And she would profit by the occasion to fix up the
+fire, which M. Rovère, busy with his reading or writing, had forgotten
+to attend to. She was much attached to him. She did not wish to have him
+suffer from the cold, and recently had entered as often as possible,
+under one pretext or another, knowing that he was ill, and desiring to
+be at hand in case of need. When, one evening, about eight days before,
+she had entered the room while the visitor, whom Moniche called the
+individual, was there, the portress had been astonished to see the two
+men standing before Rovère's iron safe, the door wide open and both
+looking at some papers spread out on the desk.
+
+Rovère, with his sallow, thin face, was holding some papers in his hand,
+and the other was bent over, looking with eager eyes at--Mme. Moniche
+had seen them well--some rent rolls, bills and deeds. Perceiving Mme.
+Moniche, who stood hesitating on the threshold, M. Rovère frowned,
+mechanically made a move as if to gather up the scattered papers. But
+the portress said, "Pardon!" and quickly withdrew. Only--ah! only--she
+had time to see, to see plainly the iron safe, the heavy doors standing
+open, the keys hanging from the lock, and M. Rovère in his dressing
+gown; the official papers, yellow and blue, others bearing seals and a
+ribbon, lying there before him. He seemed in a bad humor, but said
+nothing. Not a word.
+
+"And the other one?"
+
+The other man was as pale as M. Rovère. He resembled him, moreover. It
+was, perhaps, a relative. Mme. Moniche had noticed the expression with
+which he contemplated those papers and the fierce glance which he cast
+at her when she pushed open the door without knowing what sight awaited
+her. She had gone downstairs, but she did not at once tell her husband
+about what she had seen. It was some time afterward. The individual had
+come again. He remained closeted with M. Rovère for some hours. The
+sick man was lying on the lounge. The portress had heard them through
+the door talking in low tones. She did not know what they said. She
+could hear only a murmur. And she had very good ears, too. But she heard
+only confused sounds, not one plain word. When, however, the visitor was
+going away she heard Rovère say to him: "I ought to have told all
+earlier."
+
+Did the dead man possess a secret which weighed heavily upon him, and
+which he shared with that other? And the other? Who was he? Perhaps an
+accomplice. Everything she had said belonged to the Commissary of Police
+and to the press. She had told her story with omissions, with timorous
+looks, with sighs of doubts and useless gestures. Bernardet listened,
+noting each word, the purposes of this portress, the melodramatic gossip
+in certain information in which he verified the precision--all this was
+engraven on his brain, as earlier in the day the expression of the dead
+man's eyes had been reflected in the kodak.
+
+He tried to distinguish, as best he could, the undeniable facts in this
+first deposition, when a woman of the people, garrulous, indiscreet,
+gossiping and zealous, has the joy of playing a rôle. He mentally
+examined her story, with the interruptions which her husband made when
+she accused the individual. He stopped her with a look, placing his hand
+on her arm and said: "One must wait! One does not know. He had the
+appearance of a worthy man." The woman, pointing out with a grand
+gesture, the body lying upon the floor, said: "Oh, well! And did not M.
+Rovère have the appearance of a worthy man also? And did it hinder him
+from coming to that?"
+
+Over Bernardet's face a mocking little smile passed.
+
+"He always had the appearance of a worthy man," he said, looking at the
+dead man, "and he even seemed like a worthy man who looked at rascals
+with courage. I am certain," slowly added the officer, "that if one
+could know the last thought in that brain which thinks no more, could
+see in those unseeing eyes the last image upon which they looked, one
+would learn all that need be known about that individual of whom you
+speak and the manner of his death."
+
+"Possibly he killed himself," said the Commissary.
+
+But the hypothesis of suicide was not possible, as Bernardet remarked to
+him, much to the great contempt of the reporters who were covering their
+notebooks with a running handwriting and with hieroglyphics. The wound
+was too deep to have been made by the man's own hand. And, besides, they
+would find the weapon with which that horrible gash had been made, near
+at hand. There was no weapon of any kind near the body. The murderer
+had either carried it away with him in his flight or he had thrown it
+away in some other part of the apartment. They would soon know.
+
+They need not even wait for an autopsy to determine that it was an
+assassination. "That is evident," interrupted the Commissary; "the
+autopsy will be made, however."
+
+And, with an insistence which surprised the Commissary a little,
+Bernardet, in courteous tones, evidently haunted by one particular idea,
+begged and almost supplicated M. Desbrière to send for the Attorney for
+the Republic, so that the corpse could be taken as soon as possible to
+the Morgue.
+
+"Poor man!" exclaimed Mme. Moniche. "To the Morgue! To the Morgue!"
+Bernardet calmed her with a word.
+
+"It is necessary. It is the law. Oh, Monsieur le Commissaire, let us do
+it quickly, quickly. I will tell you why. Time will be gained--I mean to
+say, saved--and the criminal found."
+
+Then, while M. Desbrière sent an officer to the telephone office to ask
+for the Attorney for the Republic to come as quickly as possible to the
+Boulevard de Clichy, Mme. Moniche freed her mind to the reporters in
+regard to some philosophical considerations upon human destiny, which
+condemned in so unforeseen, so odiously brutal a manner, a good lodger,
+as respectable as M. Rovère, to be laid upon a slab at the Morgue, like
+a thief or a vagabond--he who went out but seldom, and who "loved his
+home so much."
+
+"The everlasting antithesis of life!" replied Paul Rodier, who made a
+note of his reflection.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V.
+
+
+SOME time passed before the arrival of the Attorney, and through the
+closed Venetian blinds the murmurs of the crowd collected below could be
+heard. The Commissary wrote his report on the corner of a table, by the
+light of a single candle, and now and then asked for some detail of
+Bernardet, who seemed very impatient. A heavy silence had fallen on the
+room; those who a short time before had exchanged observations in loud
+tones, since the Commissary had finished with Mme. Moniche had dropped
+their voices and spoke in hushed tones, as if they were in a sick room.
+Suddenly a bell rang, sending shrill notes through the silent room.
+Bernardet remarked that no doubt, the Attorney had arrived. He looked at
+his watch, a simple, silver Geneva watch, but which he prized highly--a
+present from his wife--and murmured:
+
+"There is yet time." It was, in fact, the Attorney for the Republic, who
+came in, accompanied by the Examining Magistrate, M. Ginory, whom
+criminals called "the vise," because he pressed them so hard when he got
+hold of them. M. Ginory was in the Attorney's office when the officer
+had telephoned to M. Jacquelin des Audrays, and the latter had asked
+him to accompany him to the scene of the murder. Bernardet knew them
+both well. He had more than once been associated with M. Audrays. He
+also knew M. Ginory as a very just, a very good man, although he was
+much feared, for, while searching for the truth of a matter he reserved
+judgment of those whom he had fastened in his vise. M. Audrays was still
+a young man, slender and correct, tightly buttoned up in his redingote,
+smooth-shaven, wearing eyeglasses.
+
+The red ribbon in his buttonhole seemed a little too large, like a
+rosette worn there through coquetry. M. Ginory, on the contrary, wore
+clothes too large for him; his necktie was tied as if it was a black
+cord; his hat was half brushed; he was short, stout and sanguine, with
+his little snub nose and his mouth, with its heavy jaws. He seemed,
+beside the worldly magistrate, like a sort of professor, or savant, or
+collector, who, with a leather bag stuffed with books, seemed more
+fitted to pore over some brochures or precious old volumes than to spend
+his time over musty law documents. Robust and active, with his
+fifty-five years, he entered that house of crime as an expert
+topographist makes a map, and who scarcely needs a guide, even in an
+unknown country. He went straight to the body, which, as we have said,
+lay between the two front windows, and both he and M. Audrays stood a
+moment looking at it, taking in, as had the others, all the details
+which might serve to guide them in their researches. The Attorney for
+the Republic asked the Commissary if he had made his report, and the
+latter handed it to him. He read it with satisfied nods of his head;
+during this time Bernardet had approached M. Ginory, saluted him and
+asked for a private interview with a glance of his eye; the Examining
+Magistrate understood what he meant.
+
+"Ah! Is it you, Bernardet? You wish to speak to me?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur Ginory. I beg of you to get the body to the dissecting
+room for the autopsy as soon as possible." He had quietly and almost
+imperceptibly drawn the Magistrate away toward a window, away from the
+reporters, who wished to hear every word that was uttered, where he had
+him quite by himself, in a corner of the room near the library door.
+
+"There is an experiment which must be tried, Monsieur, and it ought to
+tempt a man like you," he said.
+
+Bernardet knew very well that, painstaking even to a fault, taken with
+any new scientific discoveries, with a receptive mind, eager to study
+and to learn, M. Ginory would not refuse him any help which would aid
+justice. Had not the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences crowned,
+the year before, M. Ginory's book on "The Duties of a Magistrate to the
+Discoveries of Science?"
+
+The word "experiment" was not said in order to frighten M. Ginory.
+
+"What do you mean by that, Bernardet?" the Magistrate asked. Bernardet
+shook his head as if to intimate that the explanation was too long to
+give him there. They were not alone. Some one might hear them. And if a
+journal should publish the strange proposition which he wished to----
+
+"Ah! Ah!" exclaimed the Examining Magistrate, "then it is something
+strange, your experiment?"
+
+"Any Magistrate but you would think it wild, unreasonable, or
+ridiculous, which is worse. But you--oh! I do not say it to flatter you,
+Monsieur," quickly added the police officer, seeing that the praise
+troubled this man, who always shrank from it. "I speak thus because it
+is the very truth, and any one else would treat me as crack-brained. But
+you--no!"
+
+M. Ginory looked curiously at the little man, whose attitude was humble
+and even supplicating, and seemed to seek a favorable response, and
+whose eyes sparkled and indicated that his idea was no common one.
+
+"What is that room there?" asked M. Ginory, pointing to the half-open
+library door.
+
+"It is the study of M. Rovère--the victim"----
+
+"Let us go in there," said M. Ginory.
+
+In this room no one could hear them; they could speak freely. On
+entering, the Examining Magistrate mechanically cast his eye over the
+books, stopping at such and such a title of a rare work, and, seating
+himself in a low, easy chair, covered with Caramanie, he made a sign to
+the police officer to speak. Bernardet stood, hat in hand, in front of
+him.
+
+"M. le Juge," Bernardet began, "I beg your pardon for asking you to
+grant me an interview. But, allowing for the difference in our
+positions, which is very great, I am, like you, a scholar; very curious.
+I shall never belong to the Institute, and you will"----
+
+"Go on, Bernardet."
+
+"And you will belong to it, M. Ginory, but I strive also, in my lower
+sphere, to keep myself _au courant_ with all that is said and with all
+that is written. I was in the service of the Academy when your beautiful
+work was crowned, and when the perpetual secretary spoke of those
+Magistrates who knew how to unite the love of letters with a study of
+justice; I thought that lower down, much lower down on the ladder, M. le
+Juge, he might have also searched for and found some men who studied to
+learn and to do their best in doing their duty."
+
+"Ah! I know you, Bernardet. Your chief has often spoken of you."
+
+"I know that M. Leriche is very good to me. But it is not for me to
+boast of that. I wish only to inspire confidence in you, because what I
+wish to say to you is so strange--so very strange"----
+
+Bernardet suddenly stopped. "I know," he began, "that if I were to say
+to a physician what I am about to say to you he would think I ought to
+be shut up in Sainte-Anne. And yet I am not crazy, I beg of you to
+believe. No! but I have searched and searched. It seems to me that there
+is a mass of inventions, of discoveries, which we police officers ought
+to make use of. And, although I am a sub-Inspector"----
+
+"Go on! Go on!" said the Magistrate, quickly, with a movement of the
+head toward the open door of the salon, where the Attorney for the
+Republic was conducting the investigation, and his nod seemed to say:
+"They are at work in there--let us make haste."
+
+"I will be as brief as possible," said Bernardet, who understood what he
+meant.
+
+"Monsieur," (and his tone became rapid, precise, running up and down
+like a ball), "thirty years, or, rather, to be exact, twenty-six years
+ago, some American journals, not political, but scientific, published
+the fact that the daguerrotype--we have made long strides since then in
+photography--had permitted them to find in the retina of a murdered
+man's eye the image of the one who struck him."
+
+"Yes, I know," said M. Ginory.
+
+"In 1860, I was too young, and I had no desire to prove the truth of
+this discovery. I adore photography as I adore my profession. I pass my
+leisure hours in taking instantaneous pictures, in developing them,
+printing, and finishing them. The idea of what I am about to propose to
+you came to me by chance. I bought upon one of the quays a volume of the
+Societé de Medicine Legale of 1869, in which Dr. Vernois gives an
+account of a communication sent to the society by a physician, who also
+sent photographic proofs, thus indorsed: 'Photographs taken of the
+retina of a woman assassinated the 14th of June, 1868.'"
+
+"Yes," again said M. Ginory. "It was a communication from Dr. Bourion,
+of Darnez."
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"And the proof sent by the Doctor showed the instant when, after
+striking the mother, the assassin killed the child, while the dog sprang
+toward the little carriage in which the little one lay."
+
+"Yes, Monsieur Ginory."
+
+"Oh, well, but my poor Bernardet, Dr. Vernois, since you have read his
+report"----
+
+"By chance, Monsieur, I found it on a book stall and it has kept running
+in my head ever since, over and over and over again."
+
+"Dr. Vernois, my poor fellow, made many experiments. At first the proof
+sent was so confused, so hazy, that no one who had not seen what
+Bourion had written could have told what it was. If Vernois, who was a
+very scientific man, could find nothing--nothing, I repeat--which
+justified Dr. Bourion's declarations, what do you expect that any one
+else could make of those researches? Do not talk any more or even think
+any more about it."
+
+"I beg your pardon, Monsieur Ginory; one can and ought to think about
+it. In any case, I am thinking about it."
+
+A smile of doubt crossed M. Ginory's lips. Bernardet quickly added:
+"Photography of the invisible has been proven. Are not the Roentgen
+Rays, the famous X Rays, as incredible as that photography can find the
+image of a murderer on the retina of a dead person's eye? They invent
+some foolish things, those Americans, but they often presage the truth.
+Do they not catch, by photography, the last sighs of the dying? Do they
+not fix upon the film or on plates that mysterious thing which haunts
+us, the occult? They throw bridges across unknown abysses as over great
+bodies of water or from one precipice to another, and they reach the
+other side. I beg your pardon, Monsieur," and the police officer stopped
+short in his enthusiastic defence as he caught sight of M. Ginory's
+astonished face; "I seem to have been making a speech, a thing I
+detest."
+
+"Why do you say that to me? Because I looked astonished at what you have
+told me? I am not only surprised, I am charmed. Go on! Go on!"
+
+"Oh! well, what seemed folly yesterday will be an established fact
+to-morrow. A fact is a fact. Dr. Vernois had better have tested again
+and again his contradictory experiments. Dr. Bourion's experiments had
+preceded his own. If Dr. Vernois saw nothing in the picture taken of the
+retina of the eye of the woman assassinated June 14, 1868, I have seen
+something--yes, I have seen with a magnifying glass, while studying
+thoroughly the proof given to the society and reproduced in the bulletin
+of Volume I., No. 2, of 1870; I have seen deciphered the image which Dr.
+Bourion saw, and which Dr. Vernois did not see. Ah! it was confused, the
+proof was hazy. It was scarcely recognizable, I confess. But there are
+mirrors which are not very clear and which reflect clouded vision;
+nevertheless, the image is there. And I have seen, or what one calls
+seen, the phantom of the murderer which Dr. Bourion saw, and which
+escaped the eyes of the member of the Academy of Medicine and of the
+Hygiene Council, Honorary Physician of the Hospital, if you please."
+
+M. Ginory, who had listened to the officer with curiosity, began to
+laugh, and remarked to Bernardet that, according to this reasoning,
+illustrated medical science would find itself sacrificed to the
+instinct, the divination of a provincial physician, and that it was only
+too easy to put the Academicians in the wrong and the Independents in
+the right.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur, pardon; I put no one in the right or wrong. Dr. Bourion
+believed that he had made a discovery. Dr. Vernois was persuaded that
+Dr. Bourion had discovered nothing at all. Each had the courage of his
+conviction. What I contest is that, for twenty-six years, no one has
+experimented, no one has made any researches, since the first
+experiment, and that Dr. Bourion's communication has been simply dropped
+and forgotten."
+
+"I ask your pardon in my turn, Bernardet," replied M. Ginory, a little
+quizzically. "I have also studied the question, which seems to me a
+curious"----
+
+"Have you photographed any yourself, M. Ginory?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ah! There is where the proof is."
+
+"But in 1877, the very learned Doyen of the Academy of Medicine, M.
+Brouardel, whose great wisdom, and whose sovereign opinion was law, one
+of those men who is an honor to his country, told me that when he was in
+Heidelberg he had heard Professor Kuhne say that he had studied this
+same question; he had made impressions of the retina of the eye in the
+following cases: After the death of a dog or a wolf, he had taken out
+the eye and replaced it with the back part of the eye in front; then he
+took a very strong light and placed it in front of the eye and between
+the eye and the light he placed a small grating. This grating, after an
+exposure of a quarter of an hour, was visible upon the retina. But those
+are very different experiments from the ones one hears of in America."
+
+"They could see the bars in the grating? If that was visible, why could
+not the visage of the murderer be found there?"
+
+"Eh! Other experiments have been attempted, even after those of which
+Professor Kuhne told our compatriot. Every one, you understand, has
+borne only negative results, and M. Brouardel could tell you, better
+than I, that in the physiological and oculistic treatises, published
+during the last ten years, no allusion has been made to the preservation
+of the image on the retina after death. It is an _affair classé_,
+Bernardet."
+
+"Ah! Monsieur, yet"--and the police officer hesitated. Shaking his head,
+he again repeated: "Yet--yet!"
+
+"You are not convinced?"
+
+"No, Monsieur Ginory, and shall I tell you why? You, yourself, in spite
+of the testimony of illustrious savants, still doubt. I pray you to
+pardon me, but I see it in your eyes."
+
+"That is still another way to use the retina," said Ginory, laughing.
+"You read one's thoughts."
+
+"No, Monsieur, but you are a man of too great intelligence to say to
+yourself that there is nothing in this world _classé_, that every matter
+can be taken up again. The idea has come to me to try the experiment if
+I am permitted. Yes, Monsieur, those eyes, did you see them, the eyes of
+the dead man? They seemed to speak; they seemed to see. Their expression
+is of lifelike intensity. They see, I tell you, they see! They perceive
+something which we cannot see, and which is frightful. They bear--and no
+one can convince me to the contrary--they bear on the retina the
+reflection of the last being whom the murdered man saw before he died.
+They keep it still, they still retain that image. They are going to hold
+an autopsy; they will tell us that the throat is cut. Eh! Parbleu! We
+know it well. We see it for ourselves. Moniche, the porter, knows it as
+well as any doctor. But when one questions those eyes, when one searches
+in that black chamber where the image appears as on a plate, when one
+demands of those eyes their secret, I am convinced that one will find
+it."
+
+"You are obstinate, Bernardet."
+
+"Yes, very obstinate, Monsieur Ginory, and very patient. The pictures
+which I took with my kodak will give us the expression, the interior, so
+to speak; those which we would take of the retina would reveal to us the
+secret of the agony. And, moreover, unless I deceive myself, what
+danger attends such an experiment? One opens the poor eyes, and that is
+sinister, certainly, but when one holds an autopsy at the Morgue, when
+one enlarges the gash in the throat in order to study it, when one
+dissects the body, is it any more respectful or proper? Ah! Monsieur, if
+I but had your power"----
+
+M. Ginory seemed quite struck with all that the police officer had said
+to him, but while he still held to his convictions, he did not seem
+quite averse to trying the experiment. Who can say to science "Halt!"
+and impose upon it limits which cannot be passed? No one!
+
+"We will see, Bernardet."
+
+And in that "we will see" there was already a half promise.
+
+"Ah! if you only will, and what would it cost you?" added Bernardet,
+still urgent; indeed, almost suppliant.
+
+"Let us finish this now. They are waiting for me," said the Examining
+Magistrate.
+
+As he left M. Rovère's study, he instinctively cast a glance at the rare
+volumes, with their costly bindings, and he reentered the salon where M.
+Jacquelin des Audrays had, without doubt, finished his examination.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+THE attorney for the Republic called in the Examining Magistrate.
+Nothing more was to be done. The Magistrate had studied the position of
+the corpse, examined the wound, and now, having told M. Ginory his
+impressions, he did not hide from him his belief that the crime had been
+committed by a professional, as the stroke of the knife across the
+throat had been given neatly, scientifically, according to all the
+established rules.
+
+"One might well take it for the work of a professional butcher."
+
+"Yes, without doubt, M. Ginory; but one does not know. Brute force--a
+strong blow--can produce exactly what science can."
+
+More agitated than he wished to appear by the strange conversation
+between the Agent of Sureté and himself, the Examining Magistrate stood
+at the foot of the corpse and gazed, with a fixity almost fierce, not at
+the gaping wound of which M. Jacquelin des Audrays had spoken to him,
+but at those eyes,--those fixed eyes, those eyes which no opacity had
+yet invaded, which, open, frightful, seemingly burning with anger,
+menacing, full of accusations of some sort and animated with vengeance,
+gave him a look, immovable, most powerful.
+
+It was true! it was true! They lived! those eyes spoke. They cried to
+him for justice. They retained the expression of some atrocious vision:
+the expression of violent rage. They menaced some one--who? If the
+picture of some one was graven there, was it not the last image
+reflected on the little mirror of the retina? What if a face was
+reflected there! What if it was still retained in the depths of those
+wide-open eyes! That strange creature, Bernardet, half crazy, enthused
+with new ideas, with the mysteries which traverse chimerical brains,
+troubled him--Ginory, a man of statistics and of facts.
+
+But truly those dead eyes seemed to appeal, to speak, to designate some
+one. What more eloquent, what more terrible witness could there be than
+the dead man himself, if it was possible for his eyes to speak; if that
+organ of life should contain, shut up within it, preserved, the secret
+of death? Bernardet, whose eyes never left the magistrate's face, ought
+to have been content, for it plainly expressed doubt, a hesitation, and
+the police officer heard him cursing under his breath.
+
+"Folly! Stupidity! Bah! we shall see!"
+
+Bernardet was filled with hope. M. Ginory, the Examining Magistrate,
+was, moreover, convinced that, for the present, and the sooner the
+better, the corpse should be sent to the Morgue. There, only, could a
+thorough and scientific examination be made. The reporter listened
+intently to the conversation, and Mme. Moniche clasped her hands, more
+and more agonized by that word Morgue, which, among the people, produces
+the same terror that that other word, which means, however, careful
+attendance, scientific treatment and safety,--hospital, does.
+
+Nothing was now to be done except to question some of the neighbors and
+to take a sketch of the salon. Bernardet said to the Magistrate: "My
+photograph will give you that!" While some one went out to get a hearse,
+the Magistrates went away, the police officer placed a guard in front of
+the house. The crowd was constantly increasing and becoming more and
+more curious, violently excited and eager to see the spectacle--the
+murdered man borne from his home.
+
+Bernardet did not allow M. Ginory to go away without asking respectfully
+if he would be allowed to photograph the dead man's eye. Without giving
+him a formal answer, M. Ginory simply told him to be present at the
+autopsy at the Morgue. Evidently if the Magistrate had not been already
+full of doubt his reply would have been different. Why did that inferior
+officer have the audacity to give his opinion on the subject of
+conducting a judicial investigation? M. Ginory would long before this
+have sent him about his business if he had not become suddenly
+interested in him. In his quality of Judge he had come to know
+Bernardet's history and his exploits in the service. No more capable
+man, in his line, could be found. He was perfectly and utterly devoted
+to his profession. Some strange tales were told of his methods. It was
+he who once passed an entire night on a bench, pretending intoxication,
+in order to gain sufficient information to enable him to arrest a
+murderer in the morning in a wretched hovel at La Vilette--a murderer
+armed to the teeth. It was Bernardet who, without arms--as all those
+agents--caught the famous bandit, the noted Taureau de la Glacière, a
+foreign Hercules, who had strangled his mistress. Bernardet arrested him
+by holding to his temple the cold neck of a bottle and saying, "Hands up
+or I fire!" Now what the bandit took for the cold muzzle of a pistol was
+a vial containing some medicine which Bernardet had purchased of a
+pharmacist for his liver.
+
+Deeds of valor against thieves, malefactors and insurrectionists
+abounded in Bernardet's life; and M. Ginory had just discovered in this
+man, whom he believed simply endowed with the activity and keenness of a
+hunting dog, an intelligence singularly watchful, deep and complicated.
+Bernardet, who had nothing more to do until the body should be taken to
+the Morgue, left the house directly after the Magistrates.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked Paul Rodier, the reporter.
+
+"Home. A few steps from here."
+
+"May I go along with you?" asked the journalist.
+
+"To find an occasion to make me speak? But I know nothing! I suspect
+nothing; I shall say nothing!"
+
+"Do you believe that it is the work of a thief, or revenge?"
+
+"I am certain that it was no thief. Nothing in the apartment was
+touched. As for the rest, who knows?"
+
+"M. Bernardet," laughingly said the reporter, as he walked along by the
+officer's side, "you do not wish to speak."
+
+"What good will that do?" Bernardet replied, also laughingly; "it will
+not prevent you from publishing an interview."
+
+"You think so. _Au revoir!_ I must hurry and make my copy. And you?"
+
+"I? A photograph."
+
+They separated, and Bernardet entered his house. His daughters had
+grieved over his sudden departure on Sunday on his fête day. They met
+him with joyous shouts when he appeared, and threw themselves upon him.
+"Papa! Here is papa!"
+
+Mme. Bernardet was also happy. They could go then to the garden and
+finish the picture. But their joy subsided, night had fallen, and
+Bernardet, preoccupied, wished to shut himself up so that he might
+reflect on all that had happened, and perhaps to work a little, even
+to-day.
+
+"It is thy fête day, Bernardet. Wilt thou not rest to-day?"
+
+"I can rest at dinner, dear. Until then, I must use the time reading
+over a mass of evidence."
+
+"Then thou wilt need a lamp?" asked Mme. Bernardet.
+
+"Yes, my dear; light the lamp."
+
+Next to their bedchamber M. Bernardet had fitted up a little room for
+his private use. It was a tiny den, in which was a mahogany table loaded
+with books and papers, and at which he worked when he had time, reading,
+annotating, copying from the papers, and collecting extracts for hours
+at a time. No one was allowed to enter this room, filled with old
+papers. Mme. Bernardet well called it "a nest of microbes." Bernardet
+found pleasure in this sporadic place, which in Summer was stifling. In
+Winter he worked without a fire.
+
+Mme. Bernardet was unhappy as she saw that their holiday was spoiled.
+But she very well knew that when her husband was devoured with
+curiosity, carried away by a desire to elucidate a puzzle, there was
+nothing to be said. He listened to no remonstrances, and the daughters
+knew that when they asked if their father was not coming to renew his
+games with them they were obliged to content themselves with the excuse
+which they knew so well from having heard it so often: "Papa is studying
+out a crime!"
+
+Bernardet was anxious to read over his notes, the verification of his
+hopes, of those so-called certainties of to-day. That is why he wished
+to be alone. As soon as he had closed the door he at once, from among
+the enormous piles of dust-laden books and files of old newspapers, with
+the unerring instinct of the habitual searcher who rummages through book
+stalls, drew forth a gray-covered pamphlet in which he had read, with
+feverish astonishment, the experiments and report of Dr. Vernois upon
+the application of photography in criminal researches. He quickly seated
+himself, and with trembling fingers eagerly turned over the leaves of
+the book so often read and studied, and came to the report of the member
+of the Academy of Medicine; he compared it with the proof submitted by
+Dr. Bourion, of the Medical Society, in which it was stated that the
+most learned savants had seen nothing.
+
+"Seen nothing, or wished to see nothing, perhaps!" he murmured.
+
+The light fell upon the photograph which had been sent, a long time
+before, to the Society, and Bernardet set himself to study out the old
+crime with the most careful attention; with the passion of a
+paleographer deciphering a palimpsest. This poor devil of a police
+officer, in his ardent desire to solve the vexing problem, brought to it
+the same ardor and the same faith as a bibliophile. He went over and
+over with the method of an Examining Magistrate all that old forgotten
+affair, and in the solitude and silence of his little room the last
+reflections of the setting sun falling on his papers and making pale the
+light of his lamp, he set himself the task of solving, like a
+mathematical problem, that question which he had studied, but which he
+wished to know from the very beginning, without any doubts, before
+seeing M. Ginory again at the Morgue, beside the body of M. Rovère. He
+took his pamphlet and read: "The photograph sent to the Society of
+Medical Jurisprudence by Dr. Bourion taken upon the retina of the eye of
+a woman who had been murdered the 14th of June, 1868, represents the
+moment when the assassin, after having struck the mother, kills the
+infant, and the dog belonging to the house leaps toward the unfortunate
+little victim to save it."
+
+Then studying, turn by turn, the photograph yellowed by time, and the
+article which described it, Bernardet satisfied himself, and learned the
+history by heart.
+
+M. Gallard, General Secretary of the Society, after having carefully
+hidden the back part of the photograph, had circulated it about among
+the members with this note: "Enigma of Medical Jurisprudence." And no
+one had solved the tragic enigma. Even when he had explained, no one
+could see in the photograph what Dr. Bourion saw there. Some were able
+on examining that strange picture to see in the black and white haze
+some figures as singular and dissimilar as those which the amiable
+Polonius perceived in the clouds under the suggestion of Hamlet.
+
+Dr. Vernois, appointed to write a report on Dr. Bourion's communication,
+asked him then how the operation had been conducted, and Dr. Bourion had
+given him these details, which Bernardet was now reading and studying:
+The assassination had taken place on Sunday between noon and 4 o'clock;
+the extraction of the eyes from their orbits had not been made until the
+following day at 6 o'clock in the evening.
+
+The experiment on the eyes, those terribly accusing eyes of this dead
+man, could be made twenty-four hours earlier than that other experiment.
+The image--if there was any image--ought to be, in consequence, more
+clearly defined than in Dr. Bourion's experiment.
+
+"About 6 o'clock in the evening," thought Bernardet, "and the
+photographic light was sufficient."
+
+Dr. Bourion had taken pictures of both of the child's eyes as well as
+both of the mother's eyes. The child's eyes showed nothing but hazy
+clouds. But the mother's eyes were different. Upon the left eye, next to
+a circular section back of the iris, a delicately marked image of a
+dog's head appeared. On the same section of the right eye, another
+picture; one could see the assassin raising his arm to strike and the
+dog leaping to protect his little charge.
+
+"With much good will, it must be confessed," thought Bernardet, looking
+again and again at the photograph, "and with much imagination, too. But
+it was between fifty and fifty-two hours after the murder that the proof
+was taken, while this time it will be while the body is still warm that
+the experiment will be tried."
+
+Seventeen times already had Dr. Vernois experimented on animals;
+sometimes just after he had strangled them, again when they had died
+from Prussic acid. He had held in front of their eyes a simple object
+which could be easily recognized. He had taken out the eyes and hurried
+with them to the photographer. He had, in order to better expose the
+retina to photographic action, made a sort of Maltese cross, by making
+four incisions on the edge of the sclerotic. He removed the vitreous
+humor, fixed it on a piece of card with four pins and submitted the
+retina as quickly as possible to the camera.
+
+In re-reading the learned man's report, Bernardet studied, pored over,
+carefully scrutinized the text, investigated the dozen proofs submitted
+to the Society of Medical Jurisprudence by Dr. Vernois:
+
+Retina of a cat's eye killed by Prussic acid; Vernois had held the
+animal in front of the bars of the cage in which it was confined. No
+result!
+
+Retina of a strangled dog's eye. A watch was held in front of its eyes.
+No result!
+
+Retina of a dog killed by a strangulation. A bunch of shining keys was
+held in front of his eyes. No result!
+
+Retina of the eye of a strangled dog. An eyeglass held in front of its
+eyes. Photograph made two hours after death. Nothing! In all Dr.
+Vernois's experiments--nothing! Nothing!
+
+Bernardet repeated the word angrily. Still he kept on; he read page
+after page. But all this was twenty-six years ago--photography has made
+great strides since then. What wonderful results have been obtained! The
+skeleton of the human body seen through the flesh! The instantaneous
+photograph! The kinetoscopic views! Man's voice registered for eternity
+in the phonograph! The mysterious dragged forth into the light of day!
+Many hitherto unknown secrets become common property! The invisible,
+even the invisible, the occult, placed before our eyes, as a spectacle!
+
+"One does not know all that may be done with a kodak," murmured
+Bernardet.
+
+As he ascertained, in re-reading Dr. Vernois's report on "The
+Application of Photography to Medical Jurisprudence," the savant
+himself, even while denying the results of which Dr. Bourion spoke in
+his communication, devoted himself to the general consideration upon the
+rôle which photography ought to play in medical jurisprudence. Yes, in
+1869, he asked that in the researches on poisonous substances, where the
+microscope alone had been used, photography should be applied. He
+advocated what in our day is so common, the photographing of the
+features of criminals, their deformities, their scars, their tattooings.
+He demanded that pictures should be taken of an accused person in many
+ways, without wigs and with them, with and without beards, in diverse
+costumes.
+
+"These propositions," thought Bernardet, "seem hardly new; it is
+twenty-six years since they were discovered, and now they seem as
+natural as that two and two make four. In twenty-six years from now, who
+knows what science will have done?
+
+"Vernois demanded that wounds be reproduced, their size, the instruments
+with which the crime was committed, the leaves of plants in certain
+cases of poisoning, the shape of the victim's garments, the prints of
+their hands and feet, the interior view of their rooms, the signature
+of certain accused affected with nervous disorders, parts of bodies and
+of bones, and, in fact, everything in any way connected with the crime.
+It was said that he asked too much. Did he expect judges to make
+photographs? To-day, everything that Vernois demanded in 1869, has been
+done, and, in truth, the instantaneous photograph has almost superseded
+the minutes of an investigation.
+
+"We photograph a spurious bank note. It is magnified, and, by the
+absence of a tiny dot the proof of the alteration is found. On account
+of the lack of a dot the forger is detected. The savant, Helmholtz, was
+the discoverer of this method of detecting these faults. Two bank notes,
+one authentic, the other a forgery, were placed side by side in a
+stereoscope of strong magnifying power, when the faults were at once
+detected. Helmholtz's experiment probably seemed fantastic to the forger
+condemned by a stereoscope. Oh, well, to-day ought not a like experiment
+on the retina of a dead man's eye give a like result?
+
+"Instruments have been highly perfected since the time when Dr. Bourion
+made his experiments, and if the law of human physiology has not changed
+the seekers of invisible causes must have rapidly advanced in their
+mysterious pursuits. Who knows whether, at the instant of the last
+agony, that the dying person does not put all the intensity of life
+into the retina, giving a hundredfold power to that last supreme look?"
+
+At this point of his reflections Bernardet experienced some hesitation.
+While he was not thoroughly acquainted with physiology and philosophy,
+yet he had seen so much, so many things; had known so many strange
+occurrences, and had studied many men. He knew--for he had closely
+questioned wretches who had been saved from drowning at the very last
+possible moment, some of whom had attempted suicide, others who had been
+almost drowned through accident, and each one had told him that his
+whole life, from his earliest recollection, had flashed through his mind
+in the instant of mortal agony. Yes, a whole lifetime in one instant of
+cerebral excitement!
+
+Had savants been able to solve this wonderful mystery? The _resumé_ of
+an existence in one vibration! Was it possible? Yet--Bernardet still
+used the word.
+
+And why, in an analogous sensation, could not the look of a dying man be
+seized in an intensity lasting an instant, as memory brought in a single
+flash so many diverse remembrances?
+
+"I know, since it is the imagination, and that the dead cannot see,
+while the image on the retina is a fact, a fact contradicted by wiser
+men than I." Bernardet thought on these mysteries until his head began
+to ache.
+
+"I shall make myself ill over it," he thought. "And there is something
+to be done."
+
+Then in his dusty little room, his brain overexcited, he became enthused
+with one idea. His surroundings fell away from him, he saw
+nothing--everything disappeared--the books, the papers, the walls, the
+visible objects, as did also the objections, the denials, the
+demonstrative impossibilities. And absolute conviction seized him to the
+exclusion of all extraneous surroundings. This conviction was absolute,
+instinctive, irresistible, powerful, filling him with entire faith.
+
+"This unknown thing I will find. What is to be done I will do," he
+declared to himself.
+
+He threw the pamphlet on the table, arose from his chair and descended
+to the dining-room, where his wife and children were waiting for him. He
+rubbed his hands with glee, and his face looked joyous.
+
+"Didst thou discover the trail?" Mme. Bernardet asked very simply, as a
+working woman would ask her husband if he had had a good day. The eldest
+of the little girls rushed toward him.
+
+"Papa, my dear little papa!"
+
+"My darling!"
+
+The child asked her father in a sweet voice: "Art thou satisfied with
+thy crime, papa?"
+
+"We will not talk about that," Bernardet replied. "To table! After
+dinner I will develop the pictures which I have taken with my kodak, but
+let us amuse ourselves now; it is my fête day; I wish to forget all
+about business. Let us dine now and be as happy as possible."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+THE murder of M. Rovère, committed in broad daylight, in a quarter of
+Paris filled with life and movement, caused a widespread sensation.
+There was so much mystery mixed in the affair. What could be ascertained
+about the dead man's life was very dramatically written up by Paul
+Rodier in a sketch, and this, republished everywhere and enlarged upon,
+soon gave to the crime of the Boulevard de Clichy the interest of a
+judicial romance. All that there was of vulgar curiosity in man awoke,
+as atavistic bestiality at the smell of blood.
+
+What was this M. Rovère, former Consul to Buenos Ayres or Havana,
+amateur collector of objects of virtu, member of the Society of
+Bibliophiles, where he had not been seen for a long time? What enemy had
+entered his room for the purpose of cutting his throat? Might he not
+have been assassinated by some thief who knew that his rooms contained a
+collection of works of art? The fête at Montmartre was often in full
+blast in front of the house where the murder had been committed, and
+among the crowd of ex-prison birds and malefactors who are always
+attendant upon foreign kirmesses might not some one of them have
+returned and committed the crime? The papers took advantage of the
+occasion to moralize upon permitting these fêtes to be held in the
+outlying boulevards, where vice and crime seemed to spring spontaneously
+from the soil.
+
+But no one, not one journal--perhaps by order--spoke of that unknown
+visitor whom Moniche called _the individual_, and whom the portress had
+seen standing beside M. Rovère in front of the open safe. Paul Rodier in
+his sketch scarcely referred to the fact that justice had a clew
+important enough to penetrate the mystery of the crime, and in the end
+arrest the murderer. And the readers while awaiting developments asked
+what mystery was hidden in this murder. Moniche at times, wore a
+frightened yet important air. He felt that he was an object of curiosity
+to many, the centre of prejudices. The porter and his wife possessed a
+terrible secret. They were raised in their own estimation.
+
+"We shall appear at the trial," said Moniche, seeing himself already
+before the red robes, and holding up his hand to swear that he would
+tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
+
+And as they sat together in their little lodge they talked the matter
+over and over, and brought up every incident in M. Rovère's life which
+might have a bearing on the case.
+
+"Do you remember the young man who came one day and insisted on seeing
+Monsieur le Consul?"
+
+"Ah! Very well, indeed," said Moniche. "I had forgotten that one. A felt
+hat, his face bronzed, and a droll accent. He had come from away off
+somewhere. He was probably a Spaniard."
+
+"Some beggar, likely. A poor devil whom the Consul had known in America,
+in the Colonies, one knows not where."
+
+"A bad face!" said Moniche. "M. Rovère received him, however, and gave
+him aid, I remember. If the young man had come often, I should think
+that he struck the blow. And also, I ought to add, if there was not the
+other."
+
+"Yes, but there is the other," his wife replied. "There is the one whom
+I saw standing in front of the coupons, and who was looking at those
+other papers with flashing eyes, I give my word. There is that one,
+Moniche, and I am willing to put my hand into the fire and yours, too,
+Moniche, if it is not he."
+
+"If he is the one, he will be found."
+
+"Oh! but if he has disappeared? One disappears very quickly in these
+days."
+
+"We shall see! we shall see! Justice reigns, and we are here!" He said
+that "we are here!" as a grenadier of the guard before an important
+engagement.
+
+They had taken the body to the Morgue. At the hour fixed for the autopsy
+Bernardet arrived. He seemed much excited, and asked M. Ginory if,
+since their conversation in M. Rovère's library, he had reflected and
+decided to permit him to make the experiment--the famous experiment
+reported for so many years as useless, absurd, almost ridiculous.
+
+"With any one but M. Ginory I should not dare to hope," thought the
+police officer, "but he does not sneer at strange discoveries."
+
+He had brought his photographic apparatus, that kodak which he declared
+was more dangerous to the criminal than a loaded weapon. He had
+developed the negatives which he had taken, and of the three, two had
+come out in good condition. The face of the murdered man appeared with a
+clearness which, in the proofs, rendered it formidable as in the
+reality; and the eyes, those tragic, living eyes, retained their
+terrible, accusing expression which the supreme agony had left in them.
+The light had struck full on the eyes--and they spoke. Bernardet showed
+the proofs to M. Ginory. They examined them with a magnifying glass, but
+they showed only the emotion, the agony, the anger of that last moment.
+Bernardet hoped to convince M. Ginory that Bourion's experiment was not
+a failure.
+
+Eleven o'clock was the hour named for the autopsy. Twenty minutes
+before, Bernardet was at the Morgue. He walked restlessly about outside
+among the spectators--some were women, young girls, students, and
+children who were hovering about the place, hoping that some chance
+would permit them to satisfy their morbid curiosity and to enter and
+gaze on those slabs whereon lay--swollen, livid, disfigured--the bodies.
+
+Never, perhaps, in his life had the police officer been so strongly
+moved with a desire to succeed. He brought to his tragic task all the
+ardor of an apostle. It was not the idea of success, the renown, or the
+possibility of advancement which urged him on; it was the joy, the glory
+of aiding progress, of attaching his name to a new discovery. He worked
+for art and the love of art. As he wandered about, his sole thought was
+of his desire to test Dr. Bourion's experiment; of the realization of
+his dream. "Ah! if M. Ginory will only permit it," he thought.
+
+As he formulated that hope in his mind, he saw M. Ginory descend from
+the fiacre; he hurried up to him and saluted him respectfully. Seeing
+Bernardet so moved and the first one on the spot, he could not repress a
+smile.
+
+"I see you are still enthused."
+
+"I have thought of nothing else all night, Monsieur Ginory."
+
+"Well, but," said Monsieur Ginory in a tone which seemed to Bernardet to
+imply hope, "no idea must be rejected, and I do not see why we should
+not try the experiment. I have reflected upon it. Where is the
+unsuitableness?"
+
+"Ah, Monsieur le Juge," cried the agent, "if you permit it who knows but
+that we may revolutionize medical jurisprudence?"
+
+"Revolutionize, revolutionize!" Would the Examining Magistrate yet find
+it an idiotic idea?
+
+M. Ginory passed around the building and entered by a small door opening
+on the Seine. The registrar followed him, and behind him came the police
+agent. Bernardet wished to wait until the doctors delegated to perform
+the autopsy should arrive, and the head keeper of the Morgue advised him
+to possess himself with patience, and while he was waiting to look
+around and see the latest cadavers which had been brought there.
+
+"We have had, in eight days, a larger number of women than men, which is
+rare. And these women were nearly all habitués of the public balls and
+race tracks."
+
+"And how can you tell that?"
+
+"Because they have pretty feet."
+
+Professor Morin arrived with a confrère, a young Pasteurian doctor, with
+a singular mind, broad and receptive, and who passed among his
+companions for a man fond of chimeras, a little retiring, however, and
+giving over to making experiments and to vague dreams. Monsieur Morin
+saluted M. Ginory and presented to him the young doctor, Erwin by name,
+and said to the Magistrate that the house students had probably begun
+the autopsy to gain time.
+
+The body, stripped of its clothing, lay upon the dissecting table, and
+three young men, in velvet skull caps, with aprons tied about their
+waists, were standing about the corpse; they had already begun the
+autopsy. The mortal wound looked redder than ever in the whiteness of
+the naked body.
+
+Bernardet glided into the room, trying to keep out of sight, listening
+and looking, and, above everything, not losing sight of M. Ginory's
+face. A face in which the look was keen, penetrating, sharp as a knife,
+as he bent over the pale face of the murdered man, regarding it as
+searchingly as the surgeons' scalpels were searching the wound and the
+flesh. Among those men in their black clothes, some with bared heads, in
+order to work better; others with hats on, the stretched-out corpse
+seemed like a wax figure upon a marble slab. Bernardet thought of those
+images which he had seen copied from Rembrandt's pictures--the poet with
+the anatomical pincers and the shambles. The surgeons bent over the
+body, their hands busy and their scissors cutting the muscles. That
+wound, which had let out his life, that large wound, like a monstrous
+and grimacing mouth, they enlarged still more; the head oscillated from
+side to side, and they were obliged to prop it with some mats. The eyes
+remained the same, and, in spite of the hours which had passed, seemed
+as living, as menacing and eloquent as the night before; they were,
+however, veiled with something vitreous over the pupils, like the
+amaurosis of death, yet full of that anger, of that fright, or that
+ferocious malediction which was reproduced in a startling manner in the
+negatives taken by Bernardet.
+
+"The secret of the crime is in that look," thought the police agent.
+"Those eyes see, those eyes speak; they tell what they know, they accuse
+some one."
+
+Then, while the professor, his associates and his students went on with
+the autopsy, exchanging observations, following in the mutilated body,
+their researches for the truth, trying to be very accurate as to the
+nature of the wound, the form even of the knife with which it was made,
+Bernardet softly approached the Examining Magistrate and in a low tone,
+timidly, respectfully, he spoke some words, which were insistent,
+however, and pressing, urging the Magistrate to quickly interfere.
+
+"Ah! Monsieur le Juge, this is the moment; you who can do
+everything"----
+
+The Examining Magistrate has, with us, absolute power. He does whatever
+seems to him best. And he wishes to do a thing, because he wishes to do
+it. M. Ginory, curious by nature and because it was his duty,
+hesitated, scratched his ear, rubbed his nose, bit his lips, listened to
+the supplicating murmur of the police officer; but decided not to speak
+just then, and continued gazing with a fixed stare at the dead man.
+
+This thought came to him, moreover, insistent and imperious, that he was
+there to testify in all things in favor of that truth, the discovery of
+which imposed upon him--and suddenly, his sharp voice interrupted the
+surgeon's work.
+
+"Messieurs, does not the expression of the open eyes strike you?"
+
+"Yes; they express admirably the most perfect agony," M. Morin replied.
+
+"And does it not seem," asked the Examining Magistrate, "as if they were
+fixed with that expression on the murderer?"
+
+"Without doubt! The mouth seems to curse and the eyes to menace."
+
+"And what if the last image seen, in fact, that of the murderer, still
+remains upon the retina of the eyes?"
+
+M. Morin looked at the Magistrate in astonishment, his air was slightly
+mocking and the lips and eyes assumed a quizzical expression. But
+Bernardet was very much surprised when he heard one remark. Dr. Erwin
+raised his head and while he seemed to approve of that which M. Ginory
+had advanced, he said: "That image must have disappeared from the
+retina some time ago."
+
+"Who knows?" said M. Ginory.
+
+Bernardet experienced a profound emotion. He felt that this time the
+problem would be officially settled. M. Ginory had not feared ridicule
+when he spoke, and a discussion arose there, in that dissecting room, in
+the presence of the corpse. What had existed only in a dream, in
+Bernardet's little study, became here, in the presence of the Examining
+Magistrate, a member of the Institute, and the young students, almost
+full fledged doctors, a question frankly discussed in all its bearings.
+And it was he, standing back, he, a poor devil of a police officer, who
+had urged this Examining Magistrate to question this savant.
+
+"At the back of the eyes," said the Professor, touching the eyes with
+his scalpel, "there is nothing, believe me. It is elsewhere that you
+must look for your proof."
+
+"But"--and M. Ginory repeated his "Who knows?"--"What if we try it this
+time; will it inconvenience you, my dear Master?" M. Morin made a
+movement with his lips which meant _peuh!_ and his whole countenance
+expressed his scorn. "But, I see no inconvenience." At the end of a
+moment he said in a sharp tone: "It will be lost time."
+
+"A little more, a little less," replied M. Ginory, "the experiment is
+worth the trouble to make it."
+
+M. Ginory had proved without doubt that he, like Bernardet, wished to
+satisfy his curiosity, and in looking at the open eyes of the corpse,
+although in his duties he never allowed himself to be influenced by the
+sentimental or the dramatic, yet it seemed to him that those eyes urged
+him to insist, nay, even supplicated him.
+
+"I know, I know," said M. Morin, "what you dream of in your magistrate's
+brain is as amusing as a tale of Edgar Poe's. But to find in those eyes
+the image of the murderer--come now, leave that to the inventive genius
+of a Rudyard Kipling, but do not mix the impossible with our researches
+in medical jurisprudence. Let us not make romance; let us make, you the
+examinations and I the dissection."
+
+The short tone in which the Professor had spoken did not exactly please
+M. Ginory, who now, a little through self-conceit (since he had made the
+proposition), a little through curiosity, decided that he would not beat
+a retreat. "Is there anything to risk?" he asked. "And it might be one
+chance in a thousand."
+
+"But there is no chance," quickly answered M. Morin. "None--none!"
+
+Then, relenting a little, he entered the discussion, explaining why he
+had no faith.
+
+"It is not I, M. Ginory, who will deny the possibility of such a result.
+But it would be miraculous. Do you believe in miracles, the impressions
+of heat, of the blood, of light, on our tissues are not catalogueable,
+if I may be allowed the expression. The impression on the retina is
+produced by the refraction which is called ethereal, phosphorescent, and
+which is almost as difficult to seize as to weigh the imponderable. To
+think to find on the retina a luminous impression after a certain number
+of hours and days would be, as Vernois has very well said, to think one
+can find in the organs of hearing the last sound which reverberated
+through them. _Peuh!_ Seize the air-bubble at the end of a tube and
+place it in a museum as a curiosity. Is there anything left of it but a
+drop of water which is burst, while of the fleeting vision or the
+passing sound nothing remains."
+
+The unfortunate Bernardet suffered keenly when he heard this. He wished
+to answer. The words came to his lips. Ah! if he was only in M. Ginory's
+place. The latter, with bowed head, listened and seemed to weigh each
+word as it dropped from M. Morin's lips.
+
+"Let us reason it, but," the Professor went on, "since the
+ophthalmoscope does not show to the oculist on the retina, any of the
+objects or beings which a sick man sees--you understand, not one of
+them--how can you think that photography can find that object or being
+on the retina of a dead man's eye?"
+
+He waited for objections from the Examining Magistrate and Bernardet
+hoped that M. Ginory would combat some of the Professor's arguments. He
+had only to say: "What of it? Let us see! Let us experiment!" And
+Bernardet had longed for just these words from him; but the Magistrate
+remained silent, his head still bent. The police agent felt, with
+despair, his chance slipping, slipping away from him, and that never,
+never again would he find a like opportunity to test the experiment.
+Suddenly, the strident tones of Dr. Erwin's voice rung out sharply, like
+an electric bell, and Bernardet experienced a sensation like that of a
+sudden unexpected illumination.
+
+"My dear Master," he respectfully began, "I saw at home in Denmark, a
+poor devil, picked up dying, half devoured by a wolf; and who, when
+taken from the very jaws of the beast, still retained in the eye a very
+visible image in which one could see the nose and teeth of the brute. A
+vision! Imagination, perhaps! But the fact struck me at the time and we
+made a note of it."
+
+"And?" questioned M. Morin, in a tone of raillery.
+
+Bernardet cocked his ears as a dog does when he hears an unusual sound.
+M. Ginory looked at this slender young man with his long blond hair, his
+eyes as blue as the waters of a lake, his face pale and wearing the
+peculiar look common to searchers after the mysterious. The students and
+the others gathered about their master, remained motionless and listened
+intently as to a lecture.
+
+"And," Dr. Erwin went on frigidly, "if we had found absolutely nothing
+we would, at least, have kept silent about an unsuccessful research, it
+is useless to say. Think, then, my dear Master, the exterior objects
+must have imprinted themselves on the retina, did they not? reduced in
+size, according to the size of the place wherein they were reflected;
+they appeared there, they certainly appeared there! There is--I beg your
+pardon for referring to it, but it is to these others (and Dr. Erwin
+designated M. Ginory, his registrar, and Bernardet)--there is in the
+retina a substance of a red color, the _pourpre retinien_, very
+sensitive to the light. Upon the deep red of this membrane objects are
+seen white. And one can fix the image. M. Edmond Perrier, professor in
+the Museum of Natural History, reports (you know it better than I, my
+dear Master), in a work on animal anatomy and physiology which our
+students are all familiar with, that he made an experiment. After
+removing a rabbit's eye, a living rabbit's eye--yes, science is
+cruel--he placed it in a dark room, so that he could obtain upon the
+retina the image of some object, a window for instance, and plunged it
+immediately into a solution of alum and prevented the decomposition of
+the _pourpre retinien_, and the window could plainly be seen, fixed on
+the eye. In that black chamber which we have under our eyebrows, in the
+orbit, is a storehouse, a storehouse of images which are retained, like
+the image which the old Dane's eye held of the wolf's nose and teeth.
+And who knows? Perhaps it is possible to ask of a dead man's eye the
+secret of what it saw when living."
+
+This was, put in more scientific terms by the young Danish doctor, the
+substance of what Bernardet believed possible. The young men had
+listened with the attractive sympathy, which is displayed when anything
+novel is explained. Rigid, upon the marble slab, the victim seemed to
+wait for the result of the discussion, deaf to all the confused sounds
+about him; his eye fixed upon the infinite, upon the unknowable which he
+now knew.
+
+It was, however, this insensible body which had caused the discussion of
+what was an enigma to savants. What was the secret of his end? The last
+word of his agony? Who made that wound which had ended his life? And
+like a statue lying on its stone couch, the murdered man seemed to wait.
+What they knew not, he knew. What they wished to know, he still knew,
+perhaps! This doubt alone, rooted deep in M. Ginory's mind, was enough
+to urge him to have the experiment tried, and, excusing himself for his
+infatuation, he begged M. Morin to grant permission to try the
+experiment, which some of the doctors had thought would be successful.
+
+"We shall be relieved even if we do not succeed, and we can but add our
+defeat to the others."
+
+M. Morin's face still bore its sceptical smile. But after all, the
+Examining Magistrate was master of the situation, and since young Dr.
+Erwin brought the result of the Denmark experiment--a contribution new
+in these researches--to add weight to the matter, the Professor
+requested that he should not be asked to lend himself to an experiment
+which he declared in advance would be a perfectly useless one.
+
+There was a photographic apparatus at the Morgue as at the Préfecture,
+used for anthropometry. Bernardet, moreover, had his kodak in his hand.
+One could photograph the retina as soon as the membrane was separated
+from the eye by the autopsy, and when, like the wing of a butterfly, it
+had been fastened to a piece of cork. And while Bernardet was accustomed
+to all the horrors of crime, yet he felt his heart beat almost to
+suffocation during this operation. He noticed that M. Ginory became very
+pale, and that he bit his lips, casting occasional pitying glances
+toward the dead man. On the contrary, the young men bent over the body
+and studied it with the admiration and joy of treasure seekers digging
+in a mine. Each human fibre seemed to reveal to them some new truth.
+They were like jewelers before a casket full of gems, and what they
+studied, weighed, examined, was a human corpse. And when those eyes,
+living, terrible, accusing, were removed, leaving behind them two empty
+orbits, the Professor suddenly spoke with marvelous eloquence, flowing
+and picturesque, as if he were speaking of works of art. And it was, in
+truth, a work of art, this wonderful mechanism which he explained to his
+students, who listened eagerly to each word. It was a work of art, this
+eye, with its sclerotic, its transparent cornea, its aqueous and
+vitreous humor, its crystalline lens, and the retina, like a
+photographic plate in that black chamber in which the luminous rays
+reflect, reversed, the objects seen. And M. Morin, holding between his
+fingers the object which he was demonstrating, spoke of the membrane
+formed of fibres and of the terminal elements of the optic nerve, as a
+professor of painting or of sculpture speaks of a gem chased by a
+Benvenuto.
+
+"The human body is a marvel," cried M. Morin, "a marvel, Messieurs," and
+he held forth for several minutes upon the wonderful construction of
+this marvel. His enthusiasm was shared, moreover, by the young men and
+Dr. Erwin, who listened intently. Bernardet, ignorant and respectful,
+felt troubled in the presence of this renowned physiologist, and
+congratulated himself that it was he who had insisted on this experiment
+and caused a member of the Institute to hold forth thus. As for M.
+Ginory, he left the room a moment, feeling the need of air. The
+operation, which the surgeons prolonged with joy, made him ill, and he
+felt very faint. He quickly recovered, however, and returned to the
+dissecting room, so as not to lose any of the explanation which M. Morin
+was giving as he stood with the eye in his hand. And in that eye an
+image remained, perhaps. He was anxious to search for it, to find it.
+
+"I will take it upon myself," Bernardet said.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+THE police officer did not follow the autopsical operations closely. He
+was eager to know--he was impatient for the moment when, having taken
+the picture, he might develop the negatives and study them to see if he
+could discover anything, could decipher any image. He had used
+photography in the service of anthropometry; he had taken the pictures
+at the Morgue with his kodak, and now, at home in his little room, which
+he was able to darken completely, he was developing his plates.
+
+Mme. Bernardet and the children were much struck with the expression of
+his face. It was not troubled, but preoccupied and as if he were
+completely absorbed. He was very quiet, eating very little, and seemed
+thoughtful. His wife asked him, "Art thou ill?" He responded, "No, I
+think not." And his little girls said to each other in low tones, "Papa
+is on a trail!"
+
+He was, in truth! The hunting dog smelled the scent! The pictures which
+he had taken of the retina and had developed showed a result
+sufficiently clear for Bernardet to feel confident enough to tell his
+chief that he distinctly saw a visage, the face of a man, confused, no
+doubt, but clear enough to recognize not only a type, but a distinct
+type. As from the depths of a cloud, in a sort of white halo, a human
+face appeared whose features could be distinctly seen with a magnifying
+glass! The face of a man with a pointed black beard, the forehead a
+little bald, and blackish spots which indicated the eyes. It was only a
+phantom, evidently, and the photographer at the Préfecture seemed more
+moved than Bernardet by the proofs obtained. Clearer than in spirit
+photographs, which so many credulous people believe in, the image showed
+plainly, and in studying it one could distinctly follow the contours. A
+spectre, perhaps, but the spectre of a man who was still young and
+resembled, with his pointed beard, some trooper of the sixteenth
+century, a phantom of some Seigneur Clouet.
+
+"For example," said the official photographer, "if one could discover a
+murderer by photographing a dead man's eyes, this would be miraculous.
+It is incredible!"
+
+"Not more incredible," Bernardet replied, "than what the papers publish:
+Edison is experimenting on making the blind see by using the Roentgen
+Rays. There is a miracle!"
+
+Then Bernardet took his proofs to M. Ginory. The police officer felt
+that the magistrate, the sovereign power in criminal researches, ought,
+above everything, to collaborate with him, to consent to these
+experiments which so many others had declared useless and absurd. The
+taste for researches, which was with M. Ginory a matter of temperament
+as well as a duty to his profession, was, fortunately, keen on this
+scent. Criminals call in their argot, the judges, "the pryers."
+Curiosity in this man was combined with a knowledge of profound
+researches.
+
+When Bernardet spread out on M. Ginory's desk the four photographs which
+he had brought with him, the first remark which the examining Magistrate
+made was: "But I see nothing--a cloud, a mist, and then after?"
+Bernardet drew a magnifying glass from his pocket and pointed out as he
+would have explained an enigmatical design, the lineaments, moving his
+finger over the contour of the face which his nail outlined, that human
+face which he had seen and studied in his little room in the passage of
+the Elysée des Beaux-Arts. He made him see--after some moments of minute
+examination--he made him see that face. "It is true--there is an image
+there," exclaimed M. Ginory. He added: "Is it plain enough for me to see
+it so that I can from it imagine a living being? I see the form, divined
+it at first, saw it clearly defined afterward. At first it seemed very
+vague, but I find it sufficiently well defined so that I can see each
+feature, but without any special character. Oh!" continued M. Ginory,
+excitedly, rubbing his plump little hands, "if it was only possible, if
+it was only possible! What a marvel!"
+
+"It is possible, Monsieur le Juge! have faith," Bernardet replied.
+"I swear to you that it is possible." This enthusiasm gained over
+the Examining Magistrate. Bernardet had found a fellow-sympathizer
+in his fantastic ideas. M. Ginory was now--if only to try the
+experiment--resolved to direct the investigation on this plan. He was
+anxious to first show the proofs to those who would be apt to recognize
+in them a person whom they might have once seen in the flesh. "To
+Moniche first and then to his wife," said Bernardet.
+
+"Who is Moniche?"
+
+"The concierge in the Boulevard de Clichy."
+
+Ordered to come to the court, M. and Mme. Moniche were overjoyed. They
+were summoned to appear before the Judges. They had become important
+personages. Perhaps their pictures would be published in the papers.
+They dressed themselves as for a fête. Mme. Moniche in her Sunday best
+strove to do honor to M. Rovère. She said to Moniche in all sincerity:
+"Our duty is to avenge him."
+
+While sitting on a bench in one of the long, cold corridors, the porter
+and his wife saw pass before them prisoners led by their jailers; some
+looked menacing, while others had a cringing air and seemed to try to
+escape notice. These two persons felt that they were playing rôles as
+important as those in a melodrama at the Ambigu. The time seemed long
+to them, and M. Ginory did not call them as soon as they wished that he
+would. They thought of their home, which, while they were detained
+there, would be invaded by the curious, the gossips and reporters.
+
+"How slow these Judges are," growled Moniche.
+
+When he was conducted into the presence of M. Ginory and his registrar,
+and seated upon a chair, he was much confused and less bitter. He felt a
+vague terror of all the paraphernalia of justice which surrounded him.
+He felt that he was running some great danger, and to the Judge's
+questions he replied with extreme prudence. Thanks to him and his wife
+M. Ginory found out a great deal about M. Rovère's private life; he
+penetrated into that apparently hidden existence, he searched to see if
+he could discover, among the people who had visited the old ex-Consul
+the one among all others who might have committed the deed.
+
+"You never saw the woman who visited Rovère?"
+
+"Yes. The veiled lady. The Woman in Black. But I do not know her. No one
+knew her."
+
+The story told by the portress about the time when she surprised the
+stranger and Rovère with the papers in his hand in front of the open
+safe made quite an impression on the Examining Magistrate.
+
+"Do you know the name of the visitor?"
+
+"No, Monsieur," the portress replied.
+
+"But if you should see him again would you recognize him?"
+
+"Certainly! I see his face there, before me!"
+
+She made haste to return to her home so that she might relate her
+impressions to her fellow gossips. The worthy couple left the court
+puffed up with self-esteem because of the rôle which they had been
+called upon to play. The obsequies were to be held the next day, and the
+prospect of a dramatic day in which M. and Mme. Moniche would still play
+this important rôle, created in them an agony which was almost joyous.
+The crowd around the house of the crime was always large. Some few
+passers-by stopped--stopped before the stone façade behind which a
+murder had been committed. The reporters returned again and again for
+news, and the couple, greedy for glory, could not open a paper without
+seeing their names printed in large letters. One journal had that
+morning even published an especial article: "Interviews with M. and Mme.
+Moniche."
+
+The crowd buzzed about the lodge like a swarm of flies. M. Rovère's body
+had been brought back from the Morgue. The obsequies would naturally
+attract an enormous crowd; all the more, as the mystery was still as
+deep as ever. Among his papers had been found a receipt for a tomb in
+the cemetery at Montmartre, bought by him about a year before. In
+another paper, not dated, were found directions as to how his funeral
+was to be conducted. M. Rovère, after having passed a wandering life,
+wished to rest in his native country. But no other indications of his
+wishes, nothing about his relatives, had been found. It seemed as if he
+was a man without a family, without any place in society, or any claim
+on any one to bury him. And this distressing isolation added to the
+morbid curiosity which was attached to the house, now all draped in
+black, with the letter "R" standing out in white against its silver
+escutcheon.
+
+Who would be chief mourner? M. Rovère had appointed no one. He had asked
+in that paper that a short notice should be inserted in the paper giving
+the hour and date of the services, and giving him the simple title
+ex-Consul. "I hope," went on the writer, "to be taken to the cemetery
+quietly and followed by intimate friends, if any remain."
+
+Intimate friends were scarce in that crowd, without doubt, but the dead
+man's wish could hardly be carried out. Those obsequies which he had
+wished to be quiet became a sort of fête, funereal and noisy; where the
+thousands of people crowding the Boulevard crushed each other in their
+desire to see, and pressed almost upon the draped funeral car which the
+neighbors had covered with flowers.
+
+Everything is a spectacle for Parisians. The guardians of the peace
+strove to keep back the crowds; some gamins climbed into the branches of
+the trees. The bier had been placed at the foot of the staircase in the
+narrow corridor opening upon the street. Mme. Moniche had placed upon a
+table in the lodge some loose leaves, where Rovère's unknown friends
+could write their names.
+
+Bernardet, alert, with his eyes wide open, studying the faces, searching
+the eyes, mingled with the crowd, looked at the file of people,
+scrutinized, one by one, the signatures; Bernardet, in mourning, wearing
+black gloves, seemed more like an undertaker's assistant than a police
+spy. Once he found himself directly in front of the open door of the
+lodge and the table where the leaves lay covered with signatures; when
+in the half light of the corridor draped with black, where the bier lay,
+he saw a man of about fifty, pale and very sad looking. He had arrived,
+in his turn in the line, at the table, where he signed his name. Mme.
+Moniche, clothed in black, with a white handkerchief in her hand,
+although she was not weeping, found herself side by side with Bernardet;
+in fact, their elbows touched. When the man reached the table, coming
+from the semi-darkness of the passage, and stepped into the light which
+fell full on him from the window, the portress involuntarily exclaimed,
+"Ah!" She was evidently much excited, and caught the police officer by
+the hand and said:
+
+"I am afraid!"
+
+She spoke in such a low tone that Bernardet divined rather than heard
+what she meant in that stifled cry. He looked at her from the corner of
+his eye. He saw that she was ghastly, and again she spoke in a low tone:
+"He! he whom I saw with M. Rovère before the open safe!"
+
+Bernardet gave the man one sweeping glance of the eye. He fairly pierced
+him through with his sharp look. The unknown, half bent over the table
+whereon lay the papers, showed a wide forehead, slightly bald, and a
+pointed beard, a little gray, which almost touched the white paper as he
+wrote his name.
+
+Suddenly the police officer experienced a strange sensation; it seemed
+to him that this face, the shape of the head, the pointed beard, he had
+recently seen somewhere, and that this human silhouette recalled to him
+an image which he had recently studied. The perception of a possibility
+of a proof gave him a shock. This man who was there made him think
+suddenly of that phantom discernible in the photographs taken of the
+retina of the murdered man's eye.
+
+"Who is that man?"
+
+Bernardet shivered with pleasurable excitement, and, insisting upon his
+own impression that this unknown strongly recalled the image obtained,
+and mentally he compared this living man, bending over the table,
+writing his name, with that spectre which had the air of a trooper which
+appeared in the photograph. The contour was the same, not only of the
+face, but the beard. This man reminded one of a Seigneur of the time of
+Henry III., and Bernardet found in that face something formidable. The
+man had signed his name. He raised his head, and his face, of a dull
+white, was turned full toward the police officer; their looks crossed,
+keen on Bernardet's side, veiled in the unknown. But before the fixity
+of the officer's gaze the strange man dropped his head for a moment;
+then, in his turn, he fixed a piercing, almost menacing, gaze on
+Bernardet. Then the latter slowly dropped his eyes and bowed; the
+unknown went out quickly and was lost in the crowd before the house.
+
+"It is he! it is he!" repeated the portress, who trembled as if she had
+seen a ghost.
+
+Scarcely had the unknown disappeared than the police officer took but
+two steps to reach the table, and bending over it in his turn, he read
+the name written by that man:
+
+"Jacques Dantin."
+
+The name awakened no remembrance in Bernardet's mind, and now it was a
+living problem that he had to solve.
+
+"Tell no one that you have seen that man," he hastily said to Mme.
+Moniche. "No one! Do you hear?" And he hurried out into the Boulevard,
+picking his way through the crowd and watching out to find that Jacques
+Dantin, whom he wished to follow.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+JACQUES DANTIN, moreover, was not difficult to find in the crowd. He
+stood near the funeral car; his air was very sad. Bernardet had a fine
+opportunity to examine him at his ease. He was an elegant looking man,
+slender, with a resolute air, and frowning eyebrows which gave his face
+a very energetic look. His head bared to the cold wind, he stood like a
+statue while the bearers placed the casket in the funeral car, and
+Bernardet noticed the shaking of the head--a distressed shaking. The
+longer the police officer looked at him, studied him, the stronger grew
+the resemblance to the image in the photograph. Bernardet would soon
+know who this Jacques Dantin was, and even at this moment he asked a
+question or two of some of the assistants.
+
+"Do you know who that gentleman is standing near the hearse?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Do you know what Jacques Dantin does? Was he one of M. Rovère's
+intimate friends?"
+
+"Jacques Dantin?"
+
+"Yes; see, there, with the pointed beard."
+
+"I do not know him."
+
+Bernardet thought that if he addressed the question to M. Dantin himself
+he might learn all he wished to know at once, and he approached him at
+the moment the procession started, and walked along with him almost to
+the cemetery, striving to enter into conversation with him. He spoke of
+the dead man, sadly lamenting M. Rovère's sad fate. But he found his
+neighbor very silent. Upon the sidewalk of the Boulevard the dense crowd
+stood in respectful silence and uncovered as the cortège passed, and the
+officer noticed that some loose petals from the flowers dropped upon the
+roadway.
+
+"There are a great many flowers," he remarked to his neighbor. "It is
+rather surprising, as M. Rovère seemed to have so few friends."
+
+"He has had many," the man brusquely remarked. His voice was hoarse, and
+quivered with emotion. Bernardet saw that he was strongly moved. Was it
+sorrow? Was it bitterness of spirit? Remorse, perhaps! The man did not
+seem, moreover, in a very softened mood. He walked along with his eyes
+upon the funeral car, his head uncovered in spite of the cold, and
+seemed to be in deep thought. The police officer studied him from a
+corner of his eye. His wrinkled face was intelligent, and bore an
+expression of weariness, but there was something hard about the set of
+the mouth and insolent in the turned-up end of his mustache.
+
+As they approached the cemetery at Montmartre--the journey was not a
+long one in which to make conversation--Bernardet ventured a decisive
+question: "Did you know M. Rovère very well?"
+
+The other replied: "Very well."
+
+"And whom do you think could have had any interest in this matter?" The
+question was brusque and cut like a knife. Jacques Dantin hesitated in
+his reply, looking keenly as they walked along at this little man with
+his smiling aspect, whose name he did not know and who had questioned
+him.
+
+"It is because I have a great interest in at once commencing my
+researches," said Bernardet, measuring his words in order to note the
+effect which they would produce on this unknown man. "I am a police
+detective."
+
+Oh! This time Bernardet saw Dantin shiver. There was no doubt of it;
+this close contact with a police officer troubled him, and he turned
+pale and a quick spasm passed over his face. His anxious eyes searched
+Bernardet's face, but, content with stealing an occasional glance of
+examination toward his neighbor, the little man walked along with eyes
+cast toward the ground. He studied Jacques Dantin in sudden, quick turns
+of the eye.
+
+The car advanced slowly, turned the corner of the Boulevard and passed
+into the narrow avenue which led to God's Acre. The arch of the iron
+bridge led to the Campo-Santo like a viaduct of living beings, over to
+the Land of Sleep, for it was packed with a curious crowd; it was a
+scene for a melodrama, the cortège and the funeral car covered with
+wreaths. Bernardet, still walking by Dantin's side, continued to
+question him. The agent noticed that these questions seemed to embarrass
+M. Rovère's pretended friend.
+
+"Is it a long time since M. Rovère and Jacques Dantin have known each
+other?"
+
+"We have been friends since childhood."
+
+"And did you see him often?"
+
+"No. Life had separated us."
+
+"Had you seen him recently? Mme. Moniche said that you had."
+
+"Who is Mme. Moniche?"
+
+"The concierge of the house, and a sort of housekeeper for M. Rovère."
+
+"Ah! Yes!" said Jacques Dantin, as if he had just remembered some
+forgotten sight. Bernardet, by instinct, read this man's thoughts; saw
+again with him also the tragic scene when the portress, suddenly
+entering M. Rovère's apartments, had seen him standing, face to face
+with Dantin, in front of the open safe, with a great quantity of papers
+spread out.
+
+"Do you believe that he had many enemies?" asked the police agent, with
+deliberate calculation.
+
+"No," Dantin sharply replied, without hesitation. Bernardet waited a
+moment, then in a firm voice he said: "M. Ginory will no doubt count a
+good deal on you in order to bring about the arrest of the assassin."
+
+"M. Ginory?"
+
+"The Examining Magistrate."
+
+"Then he will have to make haste with his investigation," Jacques Dantin
+replied. "I shall soon be obliged to leave Paris." This reply astonished
+Bernardet. This departure, of which the motive was probably a simple
+one, seemed to him strange under the tragic circumstances. M. Dantin,
+moreover, did not hesitate to give him, without his asking for it, his
+address, adding that he would hold himself in readiness from his return
+from the cemetery at the disposition of the Examining Magistrate.
+
+"The misfortune is that I can tell nothing, as I know nothing. I do not
+even suspect who could have any interest in killing that unfortunate
+man. A professional criminal, without doubt."
+
+"I do not believe so."
+
+The cortège had now reached one of the side avenues; a white fog
+enveloped everything, and the marble tombs shone ghostly through it. The
+spot chosen by M. Rovère himself was at the end of the Avenue de la
+Cloche. The car slowly rolled toward the open grave. Mme. Moniche,
+overcome with grief, staggered as she walked along, but her husband,
+the tailor, seemed to be equal to the occasion and his rôle. They both
+assumed different expressions behind their dead. And Paul Rodier walked
+along just in front of them, note book in hand. Bernardet promised
+himself to keep close watch of Dantin and see in what manner he carried
+himself at the tomb. A pressure of the crowd separated them for a
+moment, but the officer was perfectly satisfied. Standing on the other
+side of the grave, face to face with him, was Dantin; a row of the most
+curious had pushed in ahead of Bernardet, but in this way he could
+better see Dantin's face, and not miss the quiver of a muscle. He stood
+on tiptoe and peered this way and that, between the heads, and could
+thus scrutinize and analyze, without being perceived himself.
+
+Dantin was standing on the very edge of the grave. He held himself very
+upright, in a tense, almost aggressive way, and looked, from time to
+time, into the grave with an expression of anger and almost defiance. Of
+what was he thinking? In that attitude, which seemed to be a revolt
+against the destiny which had come to his friend, Bernardet read a kind
+of hardening of the will against an emotion which might become excessive
+and telltale. He was not, as yet, persuaded of the guiltiness of this
+man, but he did not find in that expression of defiance the tenderness
+which ought to be shown for a friend--a lifelong friend, as Dantin had
+said that Rovère was. And then the more he examined him--there, for
+example, seeing his dark silhouette clearly defined in front of the
+dense white of a neighboring column--the more the aspect of this man
+corresponded with that of the vision transfixed in the dead man's eye.
+Yes, it was the same profile of a trooper, his hand upon his hip, as if
+resting upon a rapier. Bernardet blinked his eyes in order to better see
+that man. He perceived a man who strongly recalled the vague form found
+in that retina, and his conviction came to the aid of his instinct,
+gradually increased, and became, little by little, invincible,
+irresistible. He repeated the address which this man had given him:
+"Jacques Dantin, Rue de Richelieu, 114." He would make haste to give
+that name to M. Ginory, and have a citation served upon him. Why should
+this Dantin leave Paris? What was his manner of living? his means of
+existence? What were the passions, the vices, of the man standing there
+with the austere mien of a Huguenot, in front of the open grave?
+
+Bernardet saw that, despite his strong will and his wish to stand there
+impassive, Jacques Dantin was troubled when, with a heavy sound, the
+casket glided over the cords down into the grave. He bit the ends of his
+mustache and his gloved hand made several irresistible, nervous
+movements. And the look cast into that grave! The look cast at that
+casket lying in the bottom of that grave! On that casket was a plate
+bearing the inscription: "Louis Pièrre Rovère." That mute look, rapid
+and grief-stricken, was cast upon that open casket, which contained the
+body--the gash across its throat, dissected, mutilated; the face with
+those dreadful eyes, which had been taken from their orbits, and, after
+delivering up their secret, replaced!
+
+They now defiled past the grave, and Dantin, the first, with a hand
+which trembled, sprinkled upon the casket those drops of water which are
+for our dead the last tears. Ah! but he was pale, almost livid; and how
+he trembled--this man with a stern face! Bernardet noticed the slightest
+trace of emotion. He approached in his turn and took the holy water
+sprinkler; then, as he turned away, desirous of catching up with M.
+Dantin, he heard his name called, and, turning, saw Paul Rodier, whose
+face was all smiles.
+
+"Well! Monsieur Bernardet, what new?" he asked. The tall young man had a
+charming air.
+
+"Nothing new," said the agent.
+
+"You know that this murder has aroused a great deal of interest?"
+
+"I do not doubt it."
+
+"Leon Luzarche is enchanted. Yes, Luzarche, the novelist. He had begun a
+novel, of which the first instalment was published in the same paper
+which brought out the first news of 'The Crime of the Boulevard de
+Clichy,' and as the paper has sold, sold, sold, he thinks that it is his
+story which has caused the immense and increased sales. No one is
+reading 'l'Ange-Gnome,' but the murder. All novelists ought to try to
+have a fine assassination published at the same time as their serials,
+so as to increase the sales of the paper. What a fine collaboration,
+Monsieur! Pleasantry, Monsieur! Have you any unpublished facts?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Not one? Not a trace?"
+
+"Nothing," Bernardet replied.
+
+"Oh, well! I--I have some, Monsieur--but it will surprise you. Read my
+paper! Make the papers sell."
+
+"But"--began the officer.
+
+"See here! Professional secret! Only, have you thought of the woman in
+black who came occasionally to see the ex-Consul?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Well, she must be made to come back--that woman in black. It is not an
+easy thing to do. But I believe that I have ferreted her out. Yes, in
+one of the provinces."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Professional secret," repeated the reporter, laughing.
+
+"And if M. Ginory asks for your professional secret?"
+
+"I will answer him as I answer you. Read my paper! Read _Lutèce_!"
+
+"But the Judge, to him"----
+
+"Professional secret," said Paul Rodier for the third time. "But what a
+romance it would make! The Woman in Black!"
+
+While listening, Bernardet had not lost sight of M. Dantin, who, in the
+centre of one of the avenues, stood looking at the slowly moving crowd
+of curiosity seekers. He seemed to be vainly searching for a familiar
+face. He looked haggard. Whether it was grief or remorse, he certainly
+showed violent emotion. The police officer divined that a sharp struggle
+was taking place within that man's heart, and the sadness was great with
+which he watched that crowd in order to discover some familiar face, but
+he beheld only those of the curious. What Bernardet considered of the
+greatest importance was not to lose sight of this person of whose
+existence he was ignorant an hour before; and who, to him, was the
+perpetrator of the deed or an accomplice. He followed Dantin at a
+distance, who, from the cemetery at Montmartre went on foot directly to
+the Rue de Richelieu, and stopped at the number he had given, 114.
+
+Bernardet allowed some minutes to pass after the man on whose track he
+was had entered. Then he asked the concierge if M. Jacques Dantin was
+at home. He questioned him closely and became convinced that M.
+Rovère's friend had really lived there two years and had no profession.
+
+"Then," said the police agent, "it is not this Dantin for whom I am
+looking. He is a banker." He excused himself, went out, hailed a fiacre,
+and gave the order: "To the Préfecture."
+
+His report to the Chief, M. Morel, was soon made. He listened to him
+with attention, for he had absolute confidence in the police officer.
+"Never any _gaff_ with Bernardet," M. Morel was wont to say. He, like
+Bernardet, soon felt convinced that this man was probably the murderer
+of the ex-Consul.
+
+"As to the motive which led to the crime, we shall know it later."
+
+He wished, above everything else, to have strict inquiries made into
+Dantin's past life, in regard to his present existence; and the
+inquiries would be compared with his answers to the questions which M.
+Ginory would ask him when he had been cited as a witness.
+
+"Go at once to M. Ginory's room, Bernardet," said the Chief. "During
+this time I would learn a little about what kind of a man this is."
+
+Bernardet had only to cross some corridors and mount a few steps to
+reach the gallery upon which M. Ginory's room opened. While waiting to
+be admitted he passed up and down; seated on benches were a number of
+malefactors, some of whom knew him well, who were waiting examination.
+He was accustomed to see this sight daily, and without being moved, but
+this time he was overcome by a sort of agony, a spasm which contracted
+even his fingers and left his nerves in as quivering a state as does
+insomnia. Truly, in the present case he was much more concerned than in
+an ordinary manhunt. The officer experienced the fear which an inventor
+feels before the perfection of a new discovery. He had undertaken a
+formidable problem, apparently insoluble, and he desired to solve it.
+Once or twice he took out from the pocket of his redingote an old worn
+case and looked at the proofs of the retina which he had pasted on a
+card. There could be no doubt. This figure, a little confused, had the
+very look of the man who had bent over the grave. M. Ginory would be
+struck by it when he had Jacques Dantin before him. Provided the
+Examining Magistrate still had the desire which Bernardet had incited in
+him, to push the matter to the end. Fortunately M. Ginory was very
+curious. With this curiosity anything might happen. The time seemed
+long. What if this Dantin, who spoke of leaving Paris, should disappear,
+should escape the examination? What miserable little affair occupied M.
+Ginory? Would he ever be at liberty?
+
+The door opened, a man in a blouse was led out; the registrar appeared
+on the threshold and Bernardet asked if he could not see M. Ginory
+immediately, as he had an important communication to make to him.
+
+"I will not detain him long," he said.
+
+Far from appearing annoyed, the Magistrate seemed delighted to see the
+officer. He related to him all he knew, how he had seen the man at M.
+Rovère's funeral. That Mme. Moniche had recognized him as the one whom
+she had surprised standing with M. Rovère before the open safe. That he
+had signed his name and took first rank in the funeral cortège, less by
+reason of an old friendship which dated from childhood than by that
+strange and impulsive sentiment which compels the guilty man to haunt
+the scene of his crime, to remain near his victim, as if the murder, the
+blood, the corpse, held for him a morbid fascination.
+
+"I shall soon know," said M. Ginory. He dictated to the registrar a
+citation to appear before him, rang the bell and gave the order to serve
+the notice on M. Dantin at the given address and to bring him to the
+Palais.
+
+"Do not lose sight of him," he said to Bernardet, and began some other
+examinations. Bernardet bowed and his eyes shone like those of a sleuth
+hound on the scent of his prey.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X.
+
+
+BETWEEN the examining Magistrate, who questioned, and the man cited to
+appear before him, who replied, it was a duel; a close game, rapid and
+tragic, in which each feint might make a mortal wound; in which each
+parry and thrust might be decisive. No one in the world has the power of
+the man who, in a word, can change to a prisoner the one who enters the
+Palais as a passer-by. Behind this inquisitor of the law the prison
+stands; the tribunal in its red robes appears; the beams of the scaffold
+cast their sinister shadows, and the magistrate's cold chamber already
+seems to have the lugubrious humidity of the dungeons where the
+condemned await their fate.
+
+Jacques Dantin arrived at the Palais in answer to the Magistrate's
+citation, with the apparent alacrity of a man who, regretting a friend
+tragically put out of the world, wishes to aid in avenging him. He did
+not hesitate a second, and Bernardet, who saw him enter the carriage,
+was struck with the seeming eagerness and haste with which he responded
+to the Magistrate's order. When M. Ginory was informed that Jacques
+Dantin had arrived, he allowed an involuntary "Ah!" to escape him. This
+ah! seemed to express the satisfaction of an impatient spectator when
+the signal is given which announces that the curtain is about to be
+raised. For the Examining Magistrate, the drama in which he was about to
+unravel the mystery was to begin. He kept his eyes fixed upon the door,
+attributing, correctly, a great importance to the first impression the
+comer would make upon him as he entered the room. M. Ginory found that
+he was much excited; this was to him a novel thing; but by exercising
+his strong will he succeeded in mastering the emotion, and his face and
+manner showed no trace of it.
+
+In the open door M. Jacques Dantin appeared. The first view, for the
+Magistrate, was favorable. The man was tall, well built; he bowed with
+grace and looked straight before him. But at the same time M. Ginory was
+struck by the strange resemblance of this haughty face to that image
+obtained by means of Bernardet's kodak. It seemed to him that this image
+had the same stature, the same form as that man surrounded by the hazy
+clouds. Upon a second examination it seemed to the Magistrate that the
+face betrayed a restrained violence, a latent brutality. The eyes were
+stern, under their bristling brows; the pointed beard, quite thin on the
+cheeks, showed the heavy jaws, and under the gray mustache the under lip
+protruded like those of certain Spanish cavaliers painted by Velasquez.
+
+"Prognathous," thought M. Ginory, as he noticed this characteristic.
+With a gesture he motioned M. Dantin to a chair. The man was there
+before the Judge who, with crossed hands, his elbows leaning on his
+papers, seemed ready to talk of insignificant things, while the
+registrar's bald head was bent over his black table as he rapidly took
+notes. The interview took on a grave tone, but as between two men who,
+meeting in a salon, speak of the morning or of the première of the
+evening before, and M. Ginory asked M. Dantin for some information in
+regard to M. Rovère.
+
+"Did you know him intimately?"
+
+"Yes, M. le Juge."
+
+"For how many years?"
+
+"For more than forty. We were comrades at a school in Bordeaux."
+
+"You are a Bordelais?"
+
+"Like Rovère, yes," Dantin replied.
+
+"Of late, have you seen M. Rovère frequently?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, M. le Juge, but what do you mean by of late?"
+
+M. Ginory believed that he had discovered in this question put by a man
+who was himself being interrogated--a tactic--a means of finding before
+replying, time for reflection. He was accustomed to these manoeuvres
+of the accused.
+
+"When I say of late," he replied, "I mean during the past few weeks or
+days which preceded the murder--if that suits you."
+
+"I saw him often, in fact, even oftener than formerly."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Jacques Dantin seemed to hesitate. "I do not know--chance. In Paris one
+has intimate friends, one does not see them for some months; and
+suddenly one sees them again, and one meets them more frequently."
+
+"Have you ever had any reason for the interruptions in your relations
+with M. Rovère when you ceased to see him, as you say?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"Was there between you any sort of rivalry, any motive for coldness?"
+
+"Any motive--any rivalry. What do you mean?"
+
+"I do not know," said the great man; "I ask you. I am questioning you."
+
+The registrar's pen ran rapidly and noiselessly over the paper, with the
+speed of a bird on the wing.
+
+These words, "I am questioning you," seemed to make an unexpected,
+disagreeable impression on Dantin, and he frowned.
+
+"When did you visit Rovère the last time?"
+
+"The last time?"
+
+"Yes. Strive to remember."
+
+"Two or three days before the murder."
+
+"It was not two or three days; it was two days exactly before the
+assassination."
+
+"You are right, I beg your pardon."
+
+The Examining Magistrate waited a moment, looking the man full in the
+eyes. It seemed to him that a slight flush passed over his hitherto pale
+face.
+
+"Do you suspect anyone as the murderer of Rovère?" asked M. Ginory after
+a moment's reflection.
+
+"No one," said Dantin. "I have tried to think of some one."
+
+"Had Rovère any enemies?"
+
+"I do not know of any."
+
+The Magistrate swung around by a detour habitual with him to Jacques
+Dantin's last visit to the murdered man, and begged him to be precise,
+and asked him if anything had especially struck him during that last
+interview with his friend.
+
+"The idea of suicide having been immediately dropped on the simple
+examination of the wound, no doubt exists as to the cause of death.
+Rovère was assassinated. By whom? In your last interview was there any
+talk between you of any uneasiness which he felt in regard to anything?
+Was he occupied with any especial affair? Had he--sometimes one has
+presentiments--any presentiment of an impending evil, that he was
+running any danger?"
+
+"No," Dantin replied. "Rovère made no allusion to me of any peril which
+he feared. I have asked myself who could have any interest in his death.
+One might have done the deed for plunder."
+
+"That seems very probable to me," said the Magistrate, "but the
+examination made in the apartment proves that not a thing had been
+touched. Theft was not the motive."
+
+"Then?" asked Dantin.
+
+The sanguine face of the Magistrate, that robust visage, with its
+massive jaws, lighted up with a sort of ironical expression.
+
+"Then we are here to search for the truth and to find it." In this
+response, made in a mocking tone, the registrar, who knew every varying
+shade of tone in his Chief's voice, raised his head, for in this tone he
+detected a menace.
+
+"Will you tell me all that passed in that last interview?"
+
+"Nothing whatever which could in any way put justice on the track of the
+criminal."
+
+"But yet can you, or, rather, I should say, ought you not to relate to
+me all that was said or done? The slightest circumstance might enlighten
+us."
+
+"Rovère spoke to me of private affairs," Dantin replied, but quickly
+added: "They were insignificant things."
+
+"What are insignificant things?"
+
+"Remembrances--family matters."
+
+"Family things are not insignificant, above all in a case like this. Had
+Rovère any family? No relative assisted at the obsequies."
+
+Jacques Dantin seemed troubled, unnerved rather, and this time it was
+plainly visible. He replied in a short tone, which was almost brusque:
+
+"He talked of the past."
+
+"What past?" asked the Judge, quickly.
+
+"Of his youth--of moral debts."
+
+M. Ginory turned around in his chair, leaned back, and said in a caustic
+tone: "Truly, Monsieur, you certainly ought to complete your information
+and not make an enigma of your deposition. I do not understand this
+useless reticence, and moral debts, to use your words; they are only to
+gain time. What, then, was M. Rovère's past?"
+
+Dantin hesitated a moment; not very long. Then he firmly said: "That,
+Monsieur le Juge, is a secret confided to me by my friend, and as it has
+nothing to do with this matter, I ask you to refrain from questioning me
+about it."
+
+"I beg your pardon," the magistrate replied. "There is not, there cannot
+be a secret for an Examining Magistrate. In Rovère's interests, whose
+memory ought to have public vindication, yes, in his interests, and I
+ought to say also in your own, it is necessary that you should state
+explicitly what you have just alluded to. You tell me that there is a
+secret. I wish to know it."
+
+"It is the confidence of a dead person, Monsieur," Dantin replied, in
+vibrating tones.
+
+"There are no confidences when justice is in the balance."
+
+"But it is also the secret of a living person," said Jacques Dantin.
+
+"Is it of yourself of whom you speak?"
+
+He gazed keenly at the face, now tortured and contracted.
+
+Dantin replied: "No, I do not speak of myself, but of another."
+
+"That other--who is he?"
+
+"It is impossible to tell you."
+
+"Impossible?"
+
+"Absolutely impossible!"
+
+"I will repeat to you my first question--'Why?'"
+
+"Because I have sworn on my honor to reveal it to no one."
+
+"Ah, ah!" said Ginory, mockingly; "it was a vow? That is perfect!"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le Juge; it was a vow."
+
+"A vow made to whom?"
+
+"To Rovère."
+
+"Who is no longer here to release you from it. I understand."
+
+"And," asked Dantin, with a vehemence which made the registrar's thin
+hand tremble as it flew over the paper, "what do you understand?"
+
+"Pardon," said M. Ginory; "you are not here to put questions, but to
+answer those which are asked you. It is certain that a vow which binds
+the holder of a secret is a means of defence, but the accused have, by
+making common use of it, rendered it useless."
+
+The Magistrate noticed the almost menacing frown with which Dantin
+looked at him at the words, "the accused."
+
+"The accused?" said the man, turning in his chair. "Am I one of the
+accused?" His voice was strident, almost strangled.
+
+"I do not know that," said M. Ginory, in a very calm tone; "I say that
+you wish to keep your secret, and it is a claim which I do not admit."
+
+"I repeat, Monsieur le Juge, that the secret is not mine."
+
+"It is no longer a secret which can remain sacred here. A murder has
+been committed, a murderer is to be found, and everything you know you
+ought to reveal to justice."
+
+"But if I give you my word of honor that it has not the slightest
+bearing on the matter--with the death of Rovère?"
+
+"I shall tell my registrar to write your very words in reply--he has
+done it--I shall continue to question you, precisely because you speak
+to me of a secret which has been confided to you and which you refuse to
+disclose to me. Because you do refuse?"
+
+"Absolutely!"
+
+"In spite of what I have said to you? It is a warning; you know it
+well!"
+
+"In spite of your warning!"
+
+"Take care!" M. Ginory softly said. His angry face had lost its wonted
+amiability. The registrar quickly raised his head. He felt that a
+decisive moment had come. The Examining Magistrate looked directly into
+Dantin's eyes and slowly said: "You remember that you were seen by the
+portress at the moment when Rovère, standing with you in front of his
+open safe, showed you some valuables?"
+
+Dantin waited a moment before he replied, as if measuring these words,
+and searching to find out just what M. Ginory was driving at. This
+silence, short and momentous, was dramatic. The Magistrate knew it
+well--that moment of agony when the question seems like a cord, like a
+lasso suddenly thrown, and tightening around one's neck. There was
+always, in his examination, a tragic moment.
+
+"I remember very well that I saw a person whom I did not know enter the
+room where I was with M. Rovère," Jacques Dantin replied at last.
+
+"A person whom you did not know? You knew her very well, since you had
+more than once asked her if M. Rovère was at home. That person is Mme.
+Moniche, who has made her deposition."
+
+"And what did she say in her deposition?"
+
+The Magistrate took a paper from the table in front of him and read:
+"When I entered, M. Rovère was standing before his safe, and I noticed
+that the individual of whom I spoke (the individual is you) cast upon
+the coupons a look which made me cold. I thought to myself: 'This man
+looks as if he is meditating some bad deed.'"
+
+"That is to say," brusquely said Dantin, who had listened with frowning
+brows and with an angry expression, "that Mme. Moniche accuses me of
+having murdered M. Rovère!"
+
+"You are in too much haste. Mme. Moniche has not said that precisely.
+She was only surprised--surprised and frightened--at your expression as
+you looked at the deeds, bills and coupons."
+
+"Those coupons," asked Dantin rather anxiously, "have they, then, been
+stolen?"
+
+"Ah, that we know nothing about," and the Magistrate smiled.
+
+"One has found in Rovère's safe in the neighborhood of 460,000 francs in
+coupons, city of Paris bonds, shares in mining societies, rent rolls;
+but nothing to prove that there was before the assassination more than
+that sum."
+
+"Had it been forced open?"
+
+"No; but anyone familiar with the dead man, a friend who knew the secret
+of the combination of the safe, the four letters forming the word, could
+have opened it without trouble."
+
+Among these words Dantin heard one which struck him full in the
+face--"friend." M. Ginory had pronounced it in an ordinary tone, but
+Dantin had seized and read in it a menace. For a moment the man who was
+being questioned felt a peculiar sensation. It seemed to him one day
+when he had been almost drowned during a boating party that same agony
+had seized him; it seemed that he had fallen into some abyss, some icy
+pool, which was paralyzing him. Opposite to him the Examining Magistrate
+experienced a contrary feeling. The caster of a hook and line feels a
+similar sensation; but it was intensified a hundred times in the
+Magistrate, a fisher of truth, throwing the line into a human sea, the
+water polluted, red with blood and mixed with mud.
+
+A friend! A friend could have abused the dead man's secret and opened
+that safe! And that friend--what name did he bear? Whom did M. Ginory
+wish to designate? Dantin, in spite of his _sang froid_, experienced a
+violent temptation to ask the man what he meant by those words. But the
+strange sensation which this interview caused him increased. It seemed
+to him that he had been there a long time--a very long time since he
+had crossed that threshold--and that this little room, separated from
+the world like a monk's cell, had walls thick enough to prevent any one
+from hearing anything outside. He felt as if hypnotized by that man, who
+at first had met him with a pleasant air, and who now bent upon him
+those hard eyes. Something doubtful, like vague danger, surrounded him,
+menaced him, and he mechanically followed the gesture which M. Ginory
+made as he touched the ivory button of an electric bell, as if on this
+gesture depended some event of his life. A guard entered. M. Ginory said
+to him in a short tone: "Have the notes been brought?"
+
+"M. Bernardet has just brought them to me, Monsieur le Juge."
+
+"Give them to me!" He then added: "Is Monsieur Bernardet here?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le Juge."
+
+"Very well."
+
+Jacques Dantin remembered the little man with whom he had talked in the
+journey from the house of death to the tomb, where he had heard some one
+call "Bernardet." He did not know at the time, but the name had struck
+him. Why did his presence seem of so much importance to this Examining
+Magistrate? And he looked, in his turn, at M. Ginory, who, a little
+near-sighted, was bending his head, with its sandy hair, its bald
+forehead, on which the veins stood out like cords, over his notes,
+which had been brought to him. Interesting notes--important, without
+doubt--for, visibly satisfied, M. Ginory allowed a word or two to escape
+him: "Good! Yes--Yes--Fine! Ah! Ah!--Very good!" Then suddenly Dantin
+saw Ginory raise his head and look at him--as the saying is--in the
+white of the eyes. He waited a moment before speaking, and suddenly put
+this question, thrust at Dantin like a knife-blow:
+
+"Are you a gambler, as I find?"
+
+The question made Jacques Dantin fairly bound from his chair. A gambler!
+Why did this man ask him if he was a gambler? What had his habits, his
+customs, his vices even, to do with this cause for which he had been
+cited, to do with Rovère's murder?
+
+"You are a gambler," continued the Examining Magistrate, casting from
+time to time a keen glance toward his notes. "One of the inspectors of
+gambling dens saw you lose at the Cercle des Publicistes 25,000 francs
+in one night."
+
+"It is possible; the only important point is that I paid them!" The
+response was short, crisp, showing a little irritation and stupefaction.
+
+"Assuredly," said the Judge. "But you have no fortune. You have recently
+borrowed a considerable sum from the usurers in order to pay for some
+losses at the Bourse."
+
+Dantin became very pale, his lips quivered, and his hands trembled.
+These signs of emotion did not escape the eyes of M. Ginory nor the
+registrar's.
+
+"Is it from your little notes that you have learned all that?" he
+demanded.
+
+"Certainly," M. Ginory replied. "We have been seeking for some hours for
+accurate information concerning you; started a sort of diary or rough
+draught of your biography. You are fond of pleasure. You are seen, in
+spite of your age--I pray you to pardon me, there is no malice in the
+remark: I am older than you--everywhere where is found the famous
+Tout-Paris which amuses itself. The easy life is the most difficult for
+those who have no fortune. And, according to these notes--I refer to
+them again--of fortune you have none."
+
+"That is to say," interrupted Dantin, brusquely, "it would be very
+possible that, in order to obtain money for my needs, in order to steal
+the funds in his iron safe, I would assassinate my friend?"
+
+M. Ginory did not allow himself to display any emotion at the insolent
+tone of these words, which had burst forth, almost like a cry. He looked
+Dantin full in the face, and with his hands crossed upon his notes, he
+said:
+
+"Monsieur, in a matter of criminal investigation a Magistrate, eager for
+the truth ought to admit that anything is possible, even probable, but
+in this case I ought to recognize the fact that you have not helped me
+in my task. A witness finds you tête-à-tête with the victim and
+surprises your trouble at the moment when you are examining Rovère's
+papers. I ask what it was that happened between you, you reply that that
+is your secret, and for explanation you give me your word of honor that
+it had nothing whatever to do with the murder. You would yourself think
+that I was very foolish if I insisted any longer. True, there was no
+trace of any violence in the apartment, whatever subtraction may have
+been made from the safe. It appears that you are in a position to know
+the combination; it appears, also, that you are certainly in need of
+money; as clearly known as it is possible to learn in a hurried inquiry
+such as has been made, while you have been here. I question you. I let
+you know what you ought to know, and you fly into a passion. And note
+well! it is you yourself, in your anger and your violence, who speaks
+first the word of which I have not pronounced a syllable. It is you who
+have jumped straight to a logical conclusion of the suppositions which
+are still defective, without doubt, but are not the less suppositions;
+yes, it is you who say that with a little logic one can certainly accuse
+you of the murder of the one whom you called your friend."
+
+Each word brought to Dantin's face an angry or a frightened expression,
+and the more slowly M. Ginory spoke, the more measured his words,
+emphasizing his verbs, with a sort of professional habit, as a surgeon
+touches a wound with a steel instrument, the questioned man, put through
+a sharp cross-examination, experienced a frightful anger, a strong
+internal struggle, which made the blood rush to his ears and ferocious
+lightnings dart through his eyes.
+
+"It is easy, moreover," continued M. Ginory, in a paternal tone, "for
+you to reduce to nothingness all these suppositions, and the smallest
+expression in regard to the rôle which you played in your last interview
+with Rovère would put everything right."
+
+"Ah! must we go back to that?"
+
+"Certainly, we must go back to that! The whole question lies there! You
+come to an Examining Magistrate and tell him that there is a secret; you
+speak of a third person, of recollections of youth, of moral debts--and
+you are astonished that the Judge strives to wrest the truth from you?"
+
+"I have told it."
+
+"The whole truth?"
+
+"It has nothing to do with Rovère's murder, and it would injure some one
+who knows nothing about it. I have told you so. I repeat it."
+
+"Yes," said M. Ginory, "you hold to your enigma! Oh, well, I, the
+Magistrate, demand that you reveal the truth to me. I command you to
+tell it."
+
+The registrar's pen ran over the paper and trembled as if it scented a
+storm. The psychological moment approached. The registrar knew it
+well--that moment--and the word which the Magistrate would soon
+pronounce would be decisive.
+
+A sort of struggle began in Dantin's mind--one saw his face grow
+haggard, his eyes change their expression. He looked at the papers upon
+which M. Ginory laid his fat and hairy hands; those police notes _which
+gossiped_, as peasants say, in speaking of papers or writing which they
+cannot read and which denounce them. He asked himself what more would be
+disclosed by those notes of the police agents of the scandals of the
+club, of the neighbors, of the porters. He passed his hands over his
+forehead as if to wipe off the perspiration or to ease away a headache.
+
+"Come, now, it is not very difficult, and I have the right to know,"
+said M. Ginory. After a moment Jacques Dantin said in a strong voice: "I
+swear to you, Monsieur, that nothing Rovère said to me when I saw him
+the last time could assist justice in any whatsoever, and I beg of you
+not to question me further about it."
+
+"Will you answer?"
+
+"I cannot, Monsieur."
+
+"The more you hesitate the more reason you give me to think that the
+communication would be grave."
+
+"Very grave, but it has nothing to do with your investigation."
+
+"It's not for you to outline the duties of my limits or my rights. Once
+more, I order you to reply."
+
+"I cannot."
+
+"You will not."
+
+"I cannot," brusquely said the man run to earth, with accent of
+violence.
+
+The duel was finished.
+
+M. Ginory began to laugh, or, rather, there was a nervous contraction of
+his mouth, and his sanguine face wore a scoffing look, while a
+mechanical movement of his massive jaws made him resemble a bulldog
+about to bite.
+
+"Then," said he, "the situation is a very simple one and you force me to
+come to the end of my task. You understand?"
+
+"Perfectly," said Jacques Dantin, with the impulsive anger of a man who
+stumbles over an article which he has left there himself.
+
+"You still refuse to reply?"
+
+"I refuse. I came here as a witness. I have nothing to reproach myself
+with, especially as I have nothing to fear. You must do whatever you
+choose to do."
+
+"I can," said the Magistrate, "change a citation for appearance to a
+citation for retention. I will ask you once more"----
+
+"It is useless," interrupted Dantin. "An assassin. I! What folly!
+Rovère's murderer! It seems as if I were dreaming! It is absurd, absurd,
+absurd!"
+
+"Prove to me that it is absurd in truth. Do you not wish to reply?"
+
+"I have told you all I know."
+
+"But you have said nothing of what I have demanded of you."
+
+"It is not my secret."
+
+"Yes; there is your system. It is frequent, it is common. It is that of
+all the accused."
+
+"Am I already accused?" asked Dantin, ironically.
+
+M. Ginory was silent a moment, then, slowly taking from the drawer of
+his desk some paper upon which Dantin could discern no writing this
+time, but some figures, engraved in black--he knew not what they
+were--the Magistrate held them between his fingers so as to show them.
+He swung them to and fro, and the papers rustled like dry leaves. He
+seemed to attach great value to these papers, which the registrar looked
+at from a corner of his eye, guessing that they were the photographic
+proofs which had been taken.
+
+"I beg of you to examine these proofs," said the Magistrate to Dantin.
+He held them out to him, and Dantin spread them on the table (there
+were four of them), then he put on his eyeglasses in order to see
+better. "What is that?" he asked.
+
+"Look carefully," replied the Magistrate. Dantin bent over the proofs,
+examined them one by one, divined, rather than saw, in the picture which
+was a little hazy, the portrait of a man; and upon close examination
+began to see in the spectre a vague resemblance.
+
+"Do you not see that this picture bears a resemblance to you?"
+
+This time Dantin seemed the prey of some nightmare, and his eyes
+searched M. Ginory's face with a sort of agony. The expression struck
+Ginory. One would have said that a ghost had suddenly appeared to
+Dantin.
+
+"You say that it resembles me?"
+
+"Yes. Look carefully! At first the portrait is vague; on closer
+examination it comes out from the halo which surrounds it, and the
+person who appears there bears your air, your features, your
+characteristics"----
+
+"It is possible," said Dantin. "It seems to resemble me; it seems as if
+I were looking at myself in a pocket mirror. But what does that
+signify?"
+
+"That signifies--Oh! I am going to astonish you. That signifies"--M.
+Ginory turned toward his registrar: "You saw the other evening, Favarel,
+the experiment in which Dr. Oudin showed us the heart and lungs
+performing their functions in the thorax of a living man, made visible
+by the Roentgen Rays. Well! This is not any more miraculous. These
+photographs (he turned now toward Dantin) were taken of the retina of
+the dead man's eye. They are the reflection, the reproduction of the
+image implanted there, the picture of the last living being contemplated
+in the agony; the last visual sensation which the unfortunate man
+experienced. The retina has given to us--as a witness--the image of the
+living person seen by the dead man for the last time!"
+
+A deep silence fell upon the three men in that little room, where one of
+them alone, lost his foothold at this strange revelation. For the
+Magistrate it was a decisive moment; when all had been said, when the
+man having been questioned closely, jumps at the foregone conclusion. As
+for the registrar, however blasé he may have become by these daily
+experiences, it was the decisive moment! the moment when, the line drawn
+from the water, the fish is landed, writhing on the hook!
+
+Jacques Dantin, with an instinctive movement, had rejected, pushed back
+on the table those photographs which burned his fingers like the cards
+in which some fortune teller has deciphered the signs of death.
+
+"Well?" asked M. Ginory.
+
+"Well!" repeated Dantin in a strangled tone, either not comprehending or
+comprehending too much, struggling as if under the oppression of a
+nightmare.
+
+"How do you explain how your face, your shadow if you prefer, was found
+reflected in Rovère's eyes, and that in his agony, this was probably
+what he saw; yes, saw bending over him?"
+
+Dantin cast a frightened glance around the room, and asked himself if he
+was not shut up in a maniac's cell; if the question was real; if the
+voice he heard was not the voice of a dream!
+
+"How can I explain? but I cannot explain, I do not understand, I do not
+know--it is madness, it is frightful, it is foolish!"
+
+"But yet," insisted M. Ginory, "this folly, as you call it, must have
+some explanation."
+
+"What do you wish to have me say? I do not understand. I repeat, I do
+not understand."
+
+"What if you do not, you cannot deny your presence in the house at the
+moment of Rovère's death"----
+
+"Why cannot I deny it?" Dantin interrupted.
+
+"Because the vision is there, hidden, hazy, in the retina; because this
+photograph, in which you recognized yourself, denounces, points out,
+your presence at the moment of the last agony."
+
+"I was not there! I swear that I was not there!" Dantin fervently
+declared.
+
+"Then, explain," said the Magistrate.
+
+Dantin remained silent a moment, as if frightened. Then he stammered: "I
+am dreaming!--I dreaming!" and M. Ginory replied in a calm tone:
+
+"Notice that I attribute no exaggerated importance to these proofs. It
+is not on them alone that I base the accusation. But they constitute a
+strange witness, very disquieting in its mute eloquence. They add to the
+doubt which your desire for silence has awakened. You tell me that you
+were not near Rovère when he died. These proofs, irrefutable as a fact,
+seem to prove at once the contrary. Then, the day Rovère was
+assassinated where were you?"
+
+"I do not know. At home, without doubt. I will have to think it over. At
+what hour was Rovère killed?"
+
+M. Ginory made a gesture of ignorance and in a tone of raillery said:
+"That! There are others who know it better than I." And Dantin,
+irritated, looked at him.
+
+"Yes," went on the Magistrate, with mocking politeness, "the surgeons
+who can tell the hour in which he was killed." He turned over his
+papers. "The assassination was about an hour before midday. In Paris, in
+broad daylight, at that hour, a murder was committed!"
+
+"At that hour," said Jacques Dantin, "I was just leaving home."
+
+"To go where?"
+
+"For a walk. I had a headache. I was going to walk in the Champs-Elysées
+to cure it."
+
+"And did you, in your walk, meet any one whom you knew?"
+
+"No one."
+
+"Did you go into some shop?"
+
+"I did not."
+
+"In short, you have no _alibi_?"
+
+The word made Dantin again tremble. He felt the meshes of the net
+closing around him.
+
+"An _alibi_! Ah that! Decidedly. Monsieur, you accuse me of
+assassinating my friend," he violently said.
+
+"I do not accuse; I ask a question." And M. Ginory in a dry tone which
+gradually became cutting and menacing said: "I question you, but I warn
+you that the interview has taken a bad turn. You do not answer; you
+pretend to keep secret I know not what information which concerns us.
+You are not yet exactly accused. But--but--but--you are going to be"----
+
+The Magistrate waited a moment as if to give the man time to reflect,
+and he held his pen suspended, after dipping it in the ink, as an
+auctioneer holds his ivory hammer before bringing it down to close a
+sale. "I am going to drop the pen," it seemed to say. Dantin, very
+angry, remained silent. His look of bravado seemed to say: "Do you
+dare? If you dare, do it!"
+
+"You refuse to speak?" asked Ginory for the last time.
+
+"I refuse."
+
+"You have willed it! Do you persist in giving no explanation; do you
+entrench yourself behind I know not what scruple or duty to honor; do
+you keep to your systematic silence? For the last time, do you still
+persist in this?"
+
+"I have nothing--nothing--nothing to tell you!" Dantin cried in a sort
+of rage.
+
+"Oh, well! Jacques Dantin," and the Magistrate's voice was grave and
+suddenly solemn. "You are from this moment arrested." The pen, uplifted
+till this instant, fell upon the paper. It was an order for arrest. The
+registrar looked at the man. Jacques Dantin did not move. His expression
+seemed vague, the fixed expression of a person who dreams with wide-open
+eyes. M. Ginory touched one of the electric buttons above his table and
+pointed Dantin out to the guards, whose shakos suddenly darkened the
+doorway. "Take away the prisoner," he said shortly and mechanically,
+and, overcome, without revolt, Jacques Dantin allowed himself to be led
+through the corridors of the Palais, saying nothing, comprehending
+nothing, stumbling occasionally, like an intoxicated man or a
+somnambulist.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+M. BERNARDET was triumphant. He went home to dinner in a jubilant mood.
+His three little girls, dressed alike, clasped him round the neck, all
+at the same time, while Mme. Bernardet, always fresh, smiling and gay,
+held up her face with its soft, round, rosy cheeks to him.
+
+"My little ones," said the officer, "I believe that I have done well,
+and that my chief will advance me or give me some acknowledgment. I will
+buy you some bracelets, my dears, if that happens. But it is not the
+idea of filthy lucre which has urged me on, and I believe that I have
+certainly made a great stride in judiciary instruction, all owing to my
+kodak. It would be too long an explanation and, perhaps, a perfectly
+useless one. Let us go to dinner. I am as hungry as a wolf."
+
+He ate, truly, with a good appetite, scarcely stopped to tell how the
+assassin was under lock and key. The man had been measured and had
+become a number in the collection, always increasing, of accused persons
+in the catalogue continued each day for the Museum of Crime.
+
+"Ah! He is not happy," said Bernardet between two spoonfuls of soup.
+"Not happy, not happy at all! Not happy, and astonished--protesting,
+moreover, his innocence, as they all do. It is customary."
+
+"But," sweetly asked good little Mme. Bernardet, "what if he is
+innocent?" And the three little girls, raising their heads, looked at
+their father, as if to repeat their mother's question. The eldest
+murmured: "Yes, what if mamma is right?"
+
+Bernardet shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"To hear them, if one listened to them, one would believe them all
+innocent, and the crimes would have to commit themselves. If this one is
+innocent I shall be astonished, as if I should see snow fall in Paris in
+June; he will have to prove that he is innocent. These things prove
+themselves. Give me some more soup, Mélanie."
+
+As Mme. Bernardet turned a ladleful of hot soup into her husband's plate
+she softly asked: "Are there no innocent ones condemned? Do you never
+deceive yourself?" Bernardet did not stop eating. "I cannot say--no one
+is infallible, no one--the shrewdest deceive themselves; they are
+sometimes duped. But it is rare, very rare. As well to say that it does
+not happen--Lesurques, yes (and the three little girls opened wide their
+large blue eyes as at a play), the Lesurques of the Courier de Lyon, who
+has made you weep so many times at the theatre at Montmartre; one would
+like to revise his trial to reinstate him, but no one has been able to
+do it. I have studied his trial--by my faith, I swear, I would condemn
+him still--ah! what good soup!"
+
+"But this one to-day?" asked Mme. Bernardet; "art thou certain? What is
+his name?"
+
+"Dantin--Jacques Dantin. Oh! He is a gentleman. A very fine man,
+elegant, indeed. Some Bohemian of the upper class, who evidently needed
+money, and who--Rovère had some valuables in his safe. The occasion made
+the thief--and there it is."
+
+"Papa," interrupted the eldest of the three little girls, "canst thou
+take us to see the trial, when he shall be sworn?"
+
+"That depends! It is not easy! I will try--I will ask. If thou wilt work
+hard--Oh, dame!" said Bernardet, "that will be a drama!"
+
+"I will work hard."
+
+At dessert, after he had taken his coffee, he allowed his three little
+girls to dip lumps of sugar into his saucer. He threw himself into his
+easy chair; he gave a sigh of satisfaction, like a man whose daily,
+wearisome tasks are behind him, and who is catching a moment's repose.
+
+"Ah!" he said, opening a paper which his wife had placed on a table near
+him, together with a little glass of cordial sent to them by some
+cousins in Burgundy; "I am going to see what has happened and what those
+good journalists have invented about the affair in the Boulevard de
+Clichy. It is true, it is a steeplechase between the reporters and us.
+Sometimes they win the race in the mornings. At other times, when they
+know nothing--ah! Then they invent, they embroider their histories!"
+
+A petroleum lamp lighted the paper which Bernardet unfolded and began to
+read.
+
+"Let us see what _Lutèce_ says."
+
+He suddenly remembered what Paul Rodier had said to him. "Read my
+journal!" This woman in black, found in the province, did she really
+exist? Had the novelist written a romance in order to follow the example
+of his friend? He looked over the paper to see if Paul Rodier had
+collaborated, as his friend had. Bernardet skipped over the headlines
+and glanced at the theatrical news. "Politics--they are all the same to
+me--Ministerial crisis--nothing new about that. That could as well be
+published in yesterday's paper as in to-day's! 'The Crime of the
+Boulevard de Clichy'--ah! Good! Very good! We shall see." And he began
+to read. Had Paul Rodier invented all the information to which he had
+treated the public? What was certain was that the police officer frowned
+and now gave strict attention to what he was reading, as if weighing the
+reporter's words.
+
+Rodier had republished the biography of the ex-Consul. M. Rovère had
+been mixed, in South America, in violent dramas. He was a romantic
+person, about whom more than one adventure in Buenos Ayres was known.
+The reporter had gained his information from an Argentine journal, the
+_Prensa_, established in Paris, and whose editor, in South America, had
+visited, intimately, the French Consul. The appearance of a woman in
+black, those visits made on fixed dates, as on anniversaries, revealed
+an intimacy, a relationship perhaps, of the murdered man with that
+unknown woman. The woman was young, elegant and did not live in Paris.
+Rodier had set himself to discover her retreat, her name; and perhaps,
+thanks to her, to unravel the mystery which still enveloped the murder.
+
+"_Heuh!_ That is not very precise information," thought the police
+officer. But it at least awoke Bernardet's curiosity and intelligence.
+It solved no problem, but it put one. M. de Sartines's famous "_search
+for the woman_" came naturally to Paul Rodier's pen. And he finished the
+article with some details about Jacques Dantin, the intimate, the only
+friend of Louis Pièrre Rovère; and the reporter, when he had written
+this, was still ignorant that Dantin was under arrest.
+
+"To-morrow," said Bernardet to himself, "he will give us Dantin's
+biography. He tells me nothing new in his report. And yet"----He folded
+up the paper and laid it on the table, and while sipping his cordial he
+thought of that mysterious visitor--the woman in black--and told
+himself that truly the trail must be there. He would see Moniche and his
+wife again; he would question them; he would make a thorough search.
+
+"But what for? We have the guilty man. It is a hundred to one that the
+assassin is behind bars. The woman might be an accomplice."
+
+Then Bernardet, filled with passion for his profession, rather than
+vanity--this artist in a police sense; this lover of art for art's
+sake--rubbed his hands and silently applauded himself because he had
+insisted, and, as it were, compelled M. Ginory and the doctors to adopt
+his idea. He, the humble, unknown sub-officer, standing back and simply
+striving to do his duty, had influenced distinguished persons as
+powerful as magistrates and members of the Academy. They had obeyed his
+suggestion. The little Bernardet felt that he had done a glorious deed.
+He had experienced a strong conviction, which would not be denied. He
+had proved that what had been considered only a chimera was a reality.
+He had accomplished a seeming impossibility. He had evoked the dead
+man's secret even from the tomb.
+
+"And M. Ginory thinks that it will not help his candidature at the
+Academy? He will wear the green robe, and he will owe it to me. There
+are others who owe me something, too."
+
+With his faculty for believing in his dreams, of seeing his visions
+appear, realized and living--a faculty which, in such a man, seemed like
+the strange hallucination of a poet--Bernardet did not doubt for a
+moment the reality of this phantom which had appeared in the retina of
+the eye. It was nothing more, that eye removed by the surgeon's scalpel,
+than an avenging mirror. It accused, it overwhelmed! Jacques Dantin was
+found there in all the atrocity of his crime.
+
+"When I think, when I think that they did not wish to try the
+experiment. It is made now!" thought Bernardet.
+
+M. Ginory had strongly recommended that all that part of the examination
+should not be made public. Absolute silence was necessary. If the press
+could have obtained the slightest information, every detail of the
+experiment would have become public property, and the account would have
+been embellished and made as fantastic as possible. This would have been
+a deep mine for Edgar A. Poe, who would have worked that lode well and
+made the Parisians shudder. How the ink would have been mixed with
+Rovère's blood! It was well understood that if the suspected man would
+in the end confess his guilt, the result of the singular scientifically
+incredible experiment should be made known. But until then absolute
+silence. Every thing which had been said and done around the dissecting
+table at the Morgue, or in the Examining Magistrate's room, would
+remain a secret.
+
+But would Dantin confess?
+
+The next day after M. Ginory had put him under arrest Bernardet had gone
+to the Palais for news. He wished to consult his chief about the "Woman
+in Black," to ask him what he thought of the article which had been
+published in the paper by Paul Rodier. M. Leriche attached no great
+importance to it.
+
+"A reporter's information. Very vague. There is always a woman,
+_parbleu!_ in the life of every man. But did this one know Dantin? She
+seems to me simply an old, abandoned friend, and who came occasionally
+to ask aid of the old boy"----
+
+"The woman noticed by Moniche is young," said Bernardet.
+
+"Abandoned friends are often young," M. Leriche replied, visibly
+enchanted with his observation.
+
+As for Dantin, he still maintained his obstinate silence. He persisted
+in finding iniquitous an arrest for which there was no motive, and he
+kept the haughty, almost provoking attitude of those whom the Chief
+called the greatest culprits.
+
+"Murderers in redingotes believe that they have sprung from Jupiter's
+thigh, and will not admit that any one should be arrested except those
+who wear smocks and peaked hats. They believe in an aristocracy and its
+privileges, and threaten to have us removed--you know that very well,
+Bernardet. Then, as time passes, they become, in a measure, calm and
+meek as little lambs; then they whimper and confess. Dantin will do as
+all the others have done. For the moment he howls about his innocence,
+and will threaten us, you will see, with a summons from the Chamber.
+That is of no importance."
+
+The Chief then gave the officer some instructions. He need not trouble
+himself any more, just now, about the Dantin affair, but attend to
+another matter of less importance--a trivial affair. After the murder
+and his experiences at the Morgue this matter seemed a low one to
+Bernardet. But each duty has its antithesis. The police officer put into
+this petty affair of a theft the same zeal, the same sharp attention
+with which he had investigated the crime of the Boulevard de Clichy. It
+was his profession.
+
+Bernardet started out on his quest. It was near the Halles (markets)
+that he had to work this time. The suspected man was probably one of the
+rascals who prowl about day and night, living on adventures, and without
+any home; sleeping under the bridges, or in one of the hovels on the
+outskirts of the Rue de Venise, where vice, distress and crime
+flourished. Bernardet first questioned the owner of the stolen property,
+obtained all the information which he could about the suspected man,
+and, with his keen scent for a criminal aroused, he glanced at
+everything--men, things, objects that would have escaped a less
+practised eye. He was walking slowly along toward the Permanence,
+looking keenly at the passers-by, the articles in the shops, the various
+movements in the streets, to see if he could get a hint upon which to
+work.
+
+It was his habit to thus make use of his walks. In a promenade he had
+more than once met a client, past or future. The boys fled before his
+piercing eyes; before this fat, jolly little man with the mocking smile
+which showed under his red mustache. This fright which he inspired made
+him laugh inwardly. He knew that he was respected, that he was feared.
+Among all these passers-by who jostled him, without knowing that he was
+watching them, he was a power, an unknown but sovereign power. He walked
+along with short, quick steps and watchful eyes, very much preoccupied
+with this affair, thinking of the worthless person for whom he was
+seeking, but he stopped occasionally to look at the wares spread out in
+some bric-a-brac shop or in some book store window. This also was his
+habit and his method. He ran his eye over the illustrated papers lying
+in a row in front; over the Socialistic placards, the song books. He
+kept himself _au courant_ with everything which was thought, seen,
+proclaimed and sung.
+
+"When one governs," thought Bernardet, "one ought to have the habit of
+going afoot in the street. One can learn nothing from the depths of a
+coupé, driven by a coachman wearing a tri-colored cockade." He was going
+to the Préfecture, the Permanence, when in the Rue des Bons-Enfants he
+was instinctively attracted to a shop window where rusty old arms,
+tattered uniforms, worn shakos, garments without value, smoky pictures,
+yellowed engravings and chance ornaments, rare old copies of books, old
+romances, ancient books, with eaten bindings, a mass of dissimilar
+objects--lost keys, belt buckles, abolished medals, battered sous--were
+mixed together in an oblong space as in a sort of trough. On either side
+of this shop window hung some soiled uniforms, a Zouave's vest, an
+Academician's old habit, lugubrious with its embroideries of green, a
+soiled costume which had been worn by some Pierrot at the Carnival. It
+was, in all its sad irony, the vulgar "hand-me-down that!" which makes
+one think of that other Morgue where the clothing has been rejected by
+the living or abandoned by the dead.
+
+Bernardet was neither of a melancholy temperament nor a dreamer, and he
+did not give much time to the tearful side of the question, but he was
+possessed of a ravenous curiosity, and the sight, however frequent, of
+that shop window always attracted him. With, moreover, that sort of
+magnetism which the searchers, great or small, intuitively feel--a
+collector of knick-knacks, discoverers of unknown countries, book worms
+bent over the volumes at four sous apiece, or chemists crouched over a
+retort--Bernardet had been suddenly attracted by a portrait exposed as
+an object rarer than the others, in the midst of this detritus of
+abandoned luxury or of past military glory.
+
+Yes, among the tobacco boxes, the belt buckles, the Turkish poniards,
+watches with broken cases, commonplace Japanese ornaments, a painting,
+oval in form, lay there--a sort of large medallion without a frame, and
+at first sight, by a singular attraction, it drew and held the attention
+of the police officer.
+
+"Ah!" said Bernardet out loud, "but this is singular."
+
+He leaned forward until his nose touched the cold glass, and peered
+fixedly at the picture. This painting, as large as one's hand, was the
+portrait of a man, and Bernardet fully believed at the first look he
+recognized the person whom the painter had reproduced.
+
+As his shadow fell across the window Bernardet could not distinctly see
+the painting, for it was not directly in the front line of articles
+displayed, and he stepped to one side to see if he could get a better
+view. Assuredly, there could be no doubt, the oval painting was
+certainly the portrait of Jacques Dantin, now accused of a crime. There
+was the same high forehead, the pointed beard, of the same color; the
+black redingote, tightly buttoned up and edged at the neck with the
+narrow line of a white linen collar, giving, in resembling a doublet, to
+this painting, the air of a trooper, of a swordsman, of a Guisard (a
+partisan of the Duke of Guise), of the time of Clouet.
+
+Something of a connoisseur in painting, without doubt, in his quality of
+amateur photographer, much accustomed to criticise a portrait if it was
+not a perfect likeness, Bernardet found in this picture a startling
+resemblance to Jacques Dantin; it was the very man himself! He appeared
+there, his thin face standing out from its greenish-black sombre
+background; the poise of the head displayed the same vigor as in the
+original; the clear-cut features looked energetic, and the skin had the
+same pallor which was characteristic of Dantin's complexion. This head,
+admirably painted, displayed an astonishing lifelike intensity. It had
+been done by a master hand, no doubt of that. And although in this
+portrait Jacques Dantin looked somewhat younger--for instance, the hair
+and pointed beard showed no silvery streaks in them--the resemblance was
+so marvelous that Bernardet immediately exclaimed: "It is he!"
+
+And most certainly it was Jacques Dantin himself. The more the officer
+examined it, the more convinced he became that this was a portrait of
+the man whom he had accompanied to the cemetery and to prison. But how
+could this picture have come into this bric-a-brac shop, and of whom
+could the dealer have obtained it? A reply to this would probably not be
+very difficult to obtain, and the police officer pushed back the door
+and found himself in the presence of a very large woman, with a pale,
+puffy face, which was surrounded by a lace cap. Her huge body was
+enveloped in a knitted woollen shawl. She wore spectacles.
+
+Bernardet, without stopping to salute her, pointed out the portrait and
+asked to see it. When he held it in his hands he found the resemblance
+still more startling. It was certainly Jacques Dantin! The painting was
+signed "P. B., Bordeaux, 1871." It was oval in shape; the frame was
+gone; the edge was marked, scratched, marred, as if the frame had been
+roughly torn from the picture.
+
+"Have you had this portrait a long time?" he asked of the shop woman.
+
+"I put it in the window to-day for the first time," the huge woman
+answered. "Oh, it is a choice bit. It was painted by a wicked one."
+
+"Who brought it here?"
+
+"Some one who wished to sell it. A passer-by. If it would interest you
+to know his name"----
+
+"Yes, certainly, it would interest me to know it," Bernardet replied.
+
+The shop woman looked at Bernardet defiantly and asked this question:
+
+"Do you know the man whose portrait that is?"
+
+"No. I do not know him. But this resembles one of my relatives. It
+pleases me. How much is it?"
+
+"A hundred francs," said the big woman.
+
+Bernardet suppressed at the same time a sudden start and a smile.
+
+"A hundred francs! _Diable!_ how fast you go. It is worth sous rather
+than francs."
+
+"That!" cried the woman, very indignant. "That? But look at this
+material, this background. It is famous, I tell you--I took it to an
+expert. At the public sale it might, perhaps, bring a thousand francs.
+My idea is that it is the picture of some renowned person. An actor or a
+former Minister. In fact, some historic person."
+
+"But one must take one's chance," Bernardet replied in a jeering tone.
+"But one hundred francs is one hundred francs. Too much for me. Who sold
+you the painting?"
+
+The woman went around behind the counter and opened a drawer, from which
+she took a note book, in which she kept a daily record of her sales. She
+turned over the leaves.
+
+"November 12, a small oval painting bought"--She readjusted her
+spectacles as if to better decipher the name.
+
+"I did not write the name myself; the man wrote it himself." She spelled
+out:
+
+"Charles--Charles Breton--Rue de la Condamine, 16"----
+
+"Charles Breton," Bernardet repeated; "who is this Charles Breton? I
+would like to know if he painted this portrait, which seems like a
+family portrait and has come to sell it"----
+
+"You know," interrupted the woman, "that that often happens. It is
+business. One buys or one sells all in good time."
+
+"And this Breton; how old was he?"
+
+"Oh, young. About thirty years old. Very good looking. Dark, with a full
+beard."
+
+"Did anything about him especially strike you?"
+
+"Nothing!" The woman shortly replied; she had become tired of these
+questions and looked at the little man with a troubled glance.
+
+Bernardet readily understood; and assuming a paternal, a beaming air, he
+said with his sweet smile:
+
+"I will not _fence_ any more; I will tell you the truth. I am a Police
+Inspector, and I find that this portrait strangely resembles a man whom
+we have under lock and key. You understand that it is very important I
+should know all that is to be ascertained about this picture."
+
+"But I have told you all I know, Monsieur," said the shopkeeper.
+"Charles Breton, Rue de la Condamine, 16; that is the name and address.
+I paid 20 francs for it. There is the receipt--read it, I beg. It is all
+right. We keep a good shop. Never have we, my late husband and I, been
+mixed with anything unlawful. Sometimes the bric-a-brac is soiled, but
+our hands and consciences have always been clean. Ask any one along the
+street about the Widow Colard. I owe no one and every one esteems
+me"----
+
+The Widow Colard would have gone on indefinitely if Bernardet had not
+stopped her. She had, at first mention of the police, suddenly turned
+pale, but now she was very red, and her anger displayed itself in a
+torrent of words. He stemmed the flood of verbs.
+
+"I do not accuse you, Mme. Colard, and I have said only what I wished to
+say. I passed by chance your shop; I saw in the window a portrait which
+resembled some one I knew. I ask you the price and I question you about
+its advent into your shop. There is nothing there which concerns you
+personally. I do not suspect you of receiving stolen goods; I do not
+doubt your good faith. I repeat my question. How much do you want for
+this picture?"
+
+"Twenty francs, if you please. That is what it cost me. I do not wish to
+have it draw me into anything troublesome. Take it for nothing, if that
+pleases you."
+
+"Not at all! I intend to pay you. Of what are you thinking, Mme.
+Colard?"
+
+The shopwoman had, like all people of a certain class, a horror of the
+police. The presence of a police inspector in her house seemed at once a
+dishonor and a menace. She felt herself vaguely under suspicion, and she
+felt an impulse to shout aloud her innocence.
+
+Always smiling, the good man, with a gesture like that of a prelate
+blessing his people, endeavored to reassure her, to calm her. But he
+could do nothing with her. She would not be appeased. In the long run
+this was perhaps as well, for she unconsciously, without any intention
+of aiding justice, put some clews into Bernardet's hands which finally
+aided him in tracing the man.
+
+Mme. Colard still rebelled. Did they think she was a spy, an informer?
+She had never--no, never--played such a part. She did not know the young
+man. She had bought the picture as she bought any number of things.
+
+"And what if they should cut off his head because he had confidence in
+entering my shop--I should never forgive myself, never!"
+
+"It is not going to bring Charles Breton to the scaffold. Not at all,
+not at all. It is only to find out who he is, and of whom he obtained
+this portrait. Once more--did nothing in his face strike you?"
+
+"Nothing!" Mme. Colard responded.
+
+She reflected a moment.
+
+"Ah! yes; perhaps. The shape of his hat. A felt hat with wide brim,
+something like those worn in South America or Kareros. You know, the
+kind they call sombrero. The only thing I said to myself was, 'This is
+probably some returned traveler,' and if I had not seen at the bottom of
+the picture, Bordeaux, I should have thought that this might be the
+portrait of some Spaniard, some Peruvian."
+
+Bernardet looked straight into Mme. Colard's spectacles and listened
+intently, and he suddenly remembered what Moniche had said of the odd
+appearance of the man who had, like the woman in black, called on M.
+Rovère.
+
+"Some accomplice!" thought Bernardet.
+
+He again asked Mme. Colard the price of the picture.
+
+"Anything you please," said the woman, still frightened. Bernardet
+smiled.
+
+"Come! come! What do you want for it? Fifty francs, eh? Fifty?"
+
+"Away with your fifty francs! I place it at your disposal for nothing,
+if you need it."
+
+Bernardet paid the sum he had named. He had always exactly, as if by
+principle, a fifty-franc note in his pocketbook. Very little money; a
+few white pieces, but always this note in reserve. One could never tell
+what might hinder him in his researches. He paid, then, this note,
+adding that in all probability Mme. Colard would soon be cited before
+the Examining Magistrate to tell him about this Charles Breton.
+
+"I cannot say anything else, for I do not know anything else," said the
+huge widow, whose breast heaved with emotion.
+
+She wrapped up the picture in a piece of silk paper, then in a piece of
+newspaper, which chanced to be the very one in which Paul Rodier had
+published his famous article on "The Crime of the Boulevard de Clichy."
+Bernardet left enchanted with his "find," and repeated over and over to
+himself: "It is very precious! It is a tid-bit!"
+
+Should he keep on toward the Préfecture to show this "find" to his
+Chief, or should he go at once to hunt up Charles Breton at the address
+he had given?
+
+Bernardet hesitated a moment, then he said to himself that, in a case
+like this, moments were precious; an hour lost was time wasted, and that
+as the address which Breton had given was not far away, he would go
+there first. "Rue de la Condamine, 16," that was only a short walk to
+such a tramper as he was. He had good feet, a sharp eye and sturdy legs;
+he would soon be at the Batignolles. He had taken some famous tramps in
+his time, notably one night when he had scoured Paris in pursuit of a
+malefactor. This, he admitted, had wearied him a little; but this walk
+from the Avenue des Bons-Enfants to the Rue de la Condamine was but a
+spurt. Would he find that a false name and a false address had been
+given? This was but the infancy of art. If, however, he found that this
+Charles Breton really did live at that address and that he had given his
+true name, it would probably be a very simple matter to obtain all the
+information he desired of Jacques Dantin.
+
+"What do I risk? A short walk," thought Bernardet, "a little
+fatigue--that can be charged up to Profit and Loss."
+
+He hurried toward the street and number given. It was a large house,
+several stories high. The concierge was sweeping the stairs, having left
+a card bearing this inscription tacked on the front door. "The porter is
+on the staircase." Bernardet hastened up the stairs, found the man and
+questioned him. There was no Charles Breton in the house; there never
+had been. The man who sold the portrait had given a false name and
+address. Vainly did the police officer describe the individual who had
+visited Mme. Colard's shop. The man insisted that he had never seen any
+one who in the least resembled this toreador in the big felt hat. It was
+useless to insist! Mme. Colard had been deceived. And now, how to find,
+in this immense city of Paris, this bird of passage, who had chanced to
+enter the bric-a-brac shop. The old adage of "the needle in the
+haystack" came to Bernardet's mind and greatly irritated him. But, after
+all, there had been others whom he looked for; there had been others
+whom he had found, and probably he might still be able to find another
+trail. He had a collaborator who seldom failed him--Chance! It was
+destiny which often aided him.
+
+Bernardet took an omnibus in his haste to return to his Chief. He was
+anxious to show his "find" to M. Leriche. When he reached the Préfecture
+he was immediately received. He unwrapped the portrait and showed it to
+M. Leriche.
+
+"But that is Dantin!" cried the Chief.
+
+"Is it not?"
+
+"Without doubt! Dantin when younger, but assuredly Dantin! And where did
+you dig this up?"
+
+Bernardet related his conversation with Mme. Colard and his fruitless
+visit to the Rue de la Condamine.
+
+"Oh, never mind," said M. Leriche. "This discovery is something. The man
+who sold this picture and Dantin are accomplices. Bravo, Bernardet! We
+must let M. Ginory know."
+
+The Examining Magistrate was, like the Chief and Bernardet, struck with
+the resemblance of the portrait to Dantin. His first move would be to
+question the prisoner about the picture. He would go at once to Mazas.
+M. Leriche and Bernardet should accompany him. The presence of the
+police spy might be useful, even necessary.
+
+The Magistrate and the Chief entered a fiacre, while Bernardet mounted
+beside the driver. Bernardet said nothing, although the man tried to
+obtain some information from him. After one or two monosyllabic answers,
+the driver mockingly asked:
+
+"Are you going to the Souricière (trap) to tease some fat rat?"
+
+M. Ginory and M. Leriche talked together of the _Walkyrie_, of Bayreuth;
+and the Chief asked, through politeness, for news about his candidature
+to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.
+
+"Do not let us talk of the Institute," the Magistrate replied. "It is
+like the beginning of a hunt; to sigh for the prize that brings
+unhappiness."
+
+The sombre pile, the Mazas, opened its doors to the three men. They
+traversed the long corridors, with the heavy air which pervaded them in
+spite of all efforts to the contrary, to a small room, sparsely
+furnished (a table, a few chairs, a glass bookcase), which served as an
+office for the Examining Magistrates when they had to hold any
+interviews with the prisoners.
+
+The guardian-in-chief walked along with M. Ginory, M. Leriche followed
+them, and Bernardet respectfully brought up the rear.
+
+"Bring in Jacques Dantin!" M. Ginory ordered. He seated himself at the
+table. M. Leriche took a chair at one side, and Bernardet stood near the
+little bookcase, next the only window in the room.
+
+Jacques Dantin soon appeared, led in by two guards in uniform. He was
+very pale, but still retained his haughty air and his defiant attitude.
+The Magistrate saluted him with a slight movement of the head, and
+Dantin bowed, recognizing in Bernardet the man with whom he had walked
+and conversed behind Rovère's funeral car.
+
+"Be seated, Dantin," M. Ginory said, "and explain to me, I beg, all you
+know about this portrait. You ought to recognize it."
+
+He quickly held the picture before Dantin's eyes, wishing to scrutinize
+his face to see what sudden emotion it would display. Seeing the
+portrait, Dantin shivered and said in a short tone: "It is a picture
+which I gave to Rovère."
+
+"Ah!" said M. Ginory, "you recognize it then?"
+
+"It is my portrait," Jacques Dantin declared. "It was made a long time
+ago. Rovère kept it in his salon. How did it come here?"
+
+"Ah!" again said the Magistrate. "Explain that to me!"
+
+M. Ginory seemed to wish to be a little ironical. But Dantin roughly
+said:
+
+"M. le Juge, I have nothing to explain to you. I understand nothing, I
+know nothing. Or, rather, I know that in your error--an error which you
+will bitterly regret some day or other, I am sure--you have arrested me,
+shut me up in Mazas; but that which I can assure you of is, that I have
+had nothing, do you hear, nothing whatever to do with the murder of my
+friend, and I protest with all my powers against your processes."
+
+"I comprehend that!" M. Ginory coldly replied. "Oh! I understand all the
+disagreeableness of being shut up within four walls. But then, it is
+very simple! In order to go out, one has only to give to the one who has
+a right to know the explanations which are asked. Do you still persist
+in your system? Do you still insist on keeping, I know not what secret,
+which you will not reveal to us?"
+
+"I shall keep it, Monsieur, I have reflected," said Dantin. "Yes, I have
+reflected, and in the solitude to which you have forced me I have
+examined my conscience." He spoke with firmness, less violently than at
+the Palais de Justice, and Bernardet's penetrating little eyes never
+left his face; neither did the Magistrate's, nor the Chief's.
+
+"I am persuaded," Dantin continued, "that this miserable mistake cannot
+last long, and you will recognize the truth. I shall go out, at least
+from here, without having abused a confidence which one has placed in
+me and which I intend to preserve."
+
+"Yes," said M. Ginory, "perfectly, I know your system. You will hold to
+it. It is well. Now, whose portrait is that?"
+
+"It is mine!"
+
+"By whom do you think it was possible that it could have been sold in
+the bric-a-brac shop where it was found."
+
+"I know nothing about it. Probably by the one who found it or stole it
+from M. Rovère's apartment, and who is probably, without the least
+doubt, his assassin."
+
+"That seems very simple to you?"
+
+"It seems very logical."
+
+"Suppose that this should be the exact truth, that does not detract from
+the presumption which implicates you, and from Mme. Moniche's
+deposition, which charges you"----
+
+"Yes, yes, I know. The open safe, the papers spread out, the tête-à-tête
+with Rovère, when the concierge entered the room--that signifies
+nothing!"
+
+"For you, perhaps! For Justice it has a tragic signification. But let us
+return to the portrait. It was you, I suppose, who gave it to Rovère?"
+
+"Yes, it was I," Dantin responded. "Rovère was an amateur in art,
+moreover, my intimate friend. I had no family, I had an old friend, a
+companion of my youth, whom I thought would highly prize that painting.
+It is a fine one--it is by Paul Baudry."
+
+"Ah!" said M. Ginory. "P. B. Those are Baudry's initials?"
+
+"Certainly. After the war--when I had done my duty like others, I say
+this without any intention of defending myself--Paul Baudry was at
+Bordeaux. He was painting some portraits on panels, after
+Holbein--Edmond About's among others. He made mine. It is this one which
+I gave Rovère--the one you hold in your hands."
+
+The Magistrate looked at the small oval painting and M. Leriche put on
+his eyeglasses to examine the quality of the painting. A Baudry!
+
+"What are these scratches around the edge as if nails had been drawn
+across the places?" M. Ginory asked. He held out the portrait to Dantin.
+
+"I do not know. Probably where the frame was taken off."
+
+"No, no! They are rough marks; I can see that. The picture has been
+literally torn from the frame. You ought to know how this panel was
+framed."
+
+"Very simply when I gave it to Rovère. A narrow gilt frame, nothing
+more."
+
+"Had Rovère changed the frame?"
+
+"I do not know. I do not remember. When I was at his apartment the last
+few times I do not remember to have seen the Baudry. I have thought of
+it, but I have no recollection of it."
+
+"Then you cannot furnish any information about the man who sold this
+portrait?"
+
+"None whatever!"
+
+"We might bring you face to face with that woman."
+
+"So be it! She certainly would not recognize me."
+
+"In any case, she will tell us about the man who brought the portrait to
+her."
+
+"She might describe him to me accurately, and even paint him for me,"
+said Dantin quickly. "She can neither insinuate that I know him nor
+prove to you that I am his accomplice. I do not know who he is nor from
+where he comes. I was even ignorant of his existence myself a quarter of
+an hour ago."
+
+"I have only to remand you to your cell," said the Magistrate. "We will
+hunt for the other man."
+
+Dantin, in his turn, said in an ironical tone: "And you will do well!"
+
+M. Ginory made a sign. The guards led out their prisoner. Then, looking
+at the Chief, while Bernardet still remained standing like a soldier
+near the window, the Magistrate said:
+
+"Until there are new developments, Dantin will say nothing. We must look
+for the man in the sombrero."
+
+"Necessarily!" said M. Leriche.
+
+"The needle! The needle! And the hay stack!" thought Bernardet.
+
+The Chief, smiling, turned toward him. "That belongs to you, Bernardet."
+
+"I know it well," said the little man, "but it is not easy. Oh! It is
+not easy at all."
+
+"Bah! you have unearthed more difficult things than that. Do it up
+brown! There is only one clew--the hat"----
+
+"They are not uncommon, those hats, Monsieur Leriche--they are not very
+bad hats. But yet it is a clew--if we live, we shall see."
+
+He stood motionless between the bookcase and the window, like a soldier
+carrying arms, while M. Ginory, shaking his head, said to the chief:
+"And this Dantin, what impression did he make on you?"
+
+"He is a little crack-brained!" replied the Chief.
+
+"Certainly! But guilty--you believe him guilty?"
+
+"Without doubt!"
+
+"Would you condemn him?" he quickly asked as he gazed searchingly at the
+Chief. M. Leriche hesitated.
+
+"Would you condemn him?" M. Ginory repeated, insistently.
+
+The Chief still hesitated a moment, glanced toward the impassive
+Bernardet without being able to read his face, and he said:
+
+"I do not know."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+"I DO not know," thought Bernardet as he returned home. "What one knows
+very well indeed, what one cannot deny, oh, that would be impossible! is
+that on the retina of the dead man's eye, reflected there at the supreme
+moment of the agony, is found the image of this Dantin, his face, his
+features; this man, in a word, denounced by this witness which is worth
+all other witnesses in the world! This assassinated man cast a last look
+upon his murderer as he called for aid; a last cry for 'Help!' in the
+death rattle!--and this man says: 'I do not know!' But the dead man
+knew; and the kodak knows, also. It has no passion, no anger, no hate,
+because it registers what passes; fixes that which is fleeting!"
+
+Bernardet was obstinate in his conviction. He was perfectly rooted in
+it. What if he had not persisted in believing that photography would
+reveal the truth? What weighty reason, what even acceptable one was
+there which obliged Dantin to retain silent in the presence of the
+Examining Magistrate and his registrar--in the secret interview of an
+examination--when in order to escape a prison, an accusation, he had
+only to speak two words? But if Dantin said nothing, was it because he
+had nothing to say? If he had given no explanation, was it because he
+had none to give? An innocent man does not remain silent. If at the
+instant when M. Ginory pressed the ivory button the other day, if the
+man had been able to defend himself, would he not have done it? One knew
+the secret reason of criminals for keeping silent. Their best reason is
+their guilt.
+
+Only, it seemed now certain that Dantin, although guilty, had an
+accomplice. Yes, without doubt, the man with the sombrero, the seller of
+the portrait. Where could he now be in hiding?
+
+"Not easy," Bernardet repeated the words: "Not easy; no, not easy at all
+to run him out of his rabbit hutch."
+
+The Woman in Black, the visitor, would be another important clue. On
+this side the situation seemed a simple one. Or was this woman also an
+accomplice, and would she remain silent, hidden in the Province? Or
+would the death of Rovère draw her to Paris, where she might be
+recognized and become a witness for Justice?
+
+But the days passed. What was called the mystery of the Boulevard de
+Clichy continued to interest and excite the public. Violent and
+perplexing Parliamentary discussions could not distract attention from a
+crime committed in broad daylight, almost as one might say, in the
+street, and which made one doubt the security of the city, the
+efficiency of the police. The fall of a Ministry, predicted each morning
+and anticipated in advance, could not thrust aside morbid interest in
+this murder. The death of the ex-Consul was a grand actuality!
+
+Jacques Dantin thus became a dramatic personage; the reporters created
+legends about him; some declared him guilty and brought up in support of
+their conviction some anecdotes, some tales from the clubs, given as
+proofs; others asked if the suppositions were sufficiently well based to
+accuse a man in advance of trial, and these latter ardently took up his
+defense. Paul Rodier had even, with much dexterity and eloquence,
+diplomatically written two articles, one on either side of the question.
+
+"It is," he said to himself, "the sure way of having told the truth on
+one side or the other."
+
+Bernardet did not renounce for an instant the hope of finding the man
+who had sold the picture. It was not the first time that he had picked
+the needle from a cartful of hay. Paris is large, but this human sea has
+its particular currents, as the ocean has special tides, and the police
+officer knew it well. Here or there, some day he would meet the man,
+cast up by the torrent like a waif.
+
+First of all, the man was probably a stranger from some foreign land.
+Wearing a hat like a Spaniard, he had not had time to change the style
+of dress of the country from which he had come in search of adventures.
+Bernardet haunted the hotels, searched the registers, made conversation
+with the lodgers. He found poor persons who had come from foreign
+countries, but whose motives for coming to Paris were all right.
+Bernardet never stopped searching a moment; he went everywhere, curious
+and prying--and it pleased him, when he found a leisure evening, to go
+to some of the strange wine shops or ale houses (called cabarets) to
+find subjects for observation. These cabarets are very numerous on the
+outskirts of Montmartre, in the streets and boulevards at the foot of
+the Butte. Bizarre inventions, original and disagreeable creations,
+where the ingenuity of the enterprisers sometimes made them hideous in
+order to attract; to cater to the idle, and to hold the loungers from
+among the higher classes. Cabarets born of the need for novelty, which
+might stimulate the blasé; the demand for something eccentric almost to
+morbid irony. A _Danse Macabre_ trod to the measures of an operetta;
+pleasantries of the bunglers adopting the cure-alls of the saw-bones,
+and juggling with their empty heads while dreaming the dreams of a
+Hamlet.
+
+Cabaret du Squelette!
+
+The announcement of the droll promises--apparitions, visions,
+phantoms--had often made him smile when he passed near there to go to
+the Préfecture; this wineshop, the front of which was bordered with
+black, like a letter announcing a death, and which bore, grating as it
+swung at the end of an iron rod, a red lantern for a sign.
+
+His little girls, when he laughingly spoke of the cabaret where the
+waiters were dressed like undertakers' assistants, turned pale, and
+plump little Mme. Bernardet, ordinarily smiling, would say with a sigh:
+"Is it possible that such sacrilegious things are permitted in the
+quarter?"
+
+Bernardet good-naturedly replied: "Ah, my dear, where is the harm?"
+
+"I know what I am talking about," his good wife said; "they are the
+pleasure of the unhealthy minded. They mock at death as they mock at
+everything else. Where will it all end? We shall see it"----
+
+"Or we shall not see it," interrupted her husband, laughingly.
+
+He went in there one evening, having a little time to himself, as he
+would have gone into a theatre. He knew something about this Cabaret du
+Squelette (meaning the wine shop of the skeleton). He found the place
+very droll.
+
+A small hall which had a few months before been a common wine shop had
+been transformed into a lugubrious place. The walls were painted a dead
+black, and were hung with a large number of paintings--scenes from
+masked balls, gondola parades, serenades with a balcony scene, some of
+the lovers' rendezvous of Venice and an ideal view of Granada, with
+couples gazing at each other and sighing in the gondolas on the lagoons,
+or in the Andalusian courts--and in this strange place with its romantic
+pictures, souvenirs of Musset or of Carlo Gozzi, the tables were made in
+the form of coffins with lighted candles standing upon them, and the
+waiters were dressed as undertakers' assistants, with shiny black hats
+trimmed with crape, on their heads.
+
+"What poison will you drink before you die?" asked one of the creatures
+of Bernardet.
+
+Bernardet sat and gazed about him. A few "high-flyers" from the other
+side of Paris were there. Here and there a thief from that quarter sat
+alone at a table. Some elegants in white cravats, who had come there in
+correct evening dress, were going later, after the opera, to sup with
+some première. The police officer understood very well why the blasé
+came there. They wished to jog their jaded appetites; they sought to
+find some _piment_, a curry, spice to season the tameness of their daily
+existence. The coffin-shaped tables upon which they leaned their elbows
+amused them. Several of them had asked for a _bavaroise_, as they were
+on milk diet.
+
+They pointed out to each other the gas flaming from the jets fashioned
+in the form of a broken shin-bone.
+
+"A little patience, my friends," said a sort of manager, who was dressed
+in deep mourning. "Before long we will adjourn to the Cave of Death!"
+
+The drinkers in white cravats shouted. Bernardet experienced, on the
+contrary, what Mme. Bernardet would have called a "creepy" sensation.
+Seasoned as he was to the bloody and villainous aspect of crime, he felt
+the instinctive shrinking of a healthy and level-headed bourgeois
+against these drolleries of the brain-diseased upper class and the
+pleasantries of the blasé decadents.
+
+At a certain moment, and after an explanation given by the manager, the
+gas was turned off, and the lovers in the gondolas, the guitar players,
+the singers of Spanish songs, the dancers infatuated with the Moulin
+Rouge, changed suddenly in sinister fashion. In place of the blond heads
+and rosy cheeks, skulls appeared; the smiles became grins which showed
+the teeth in their fleshless gums. The bodies, clothed in doublets, in
+velvets and satins, a moment ago, were made by some interior
+illumination to change into hideous skeletons. In his mocking tones the
+manager explained and commented on the metamorphosis, adding to the
+funeral spectacle the pleasantry of a buffoon.
+
+"See! diseased Parisians, what you will be on Sunday!"
+
+The light went out suddenly; the skeletons disappeared; the sighing
+lovers in the gondolas on the lagoons of Venice reappeared; the
+Andalusian sweethearts again gazed into each other's eyes and sang their
+love songs. Some of the women laughed, but the laughs sounded
+constrained.
+
+"Droll! this city of Paris," Bernardet thought. He sat there, leaning
+back against the wall, where verses about death were printed among the
+white tears--as in those lodges of Free Masons where an outsider is shut
+up in order to give him time to make his will--when the door opened and
+Bernardet saw a tall young man of stalwart and resolute mien enter. A
+black, curly beard surrounded his pale face. As he entered he cast a
+quick glance around the hall, the air of which was rather thick with
+cigar smoke. He seemed to be about thirty years of age, and had the air
+of an artist, a sculptor, or a painter, together with something military
+in his carriage. But what suddenly struck Bernardet was his hat, a large
+gray, felt hat, with a very wide brim, like the sombreros which the bull
+fighters wear.
+
+Possibly, a few people passing through Paris might be found wearing such
+hats. But they would probably be rare, and in order to find the seller
+of Jacques Dantin's portrait, Bernardet had only this one clew.
+
+"Oh! such a mean, little, weak, clew! But one must use it, just the
+same!" Bernardet had said.
+
+What if this young man with the strange hat was, by chance, the unknown
+for whom he was seeking? It was not at all probable. No, when one
+thought of it--not at all probable. But truth is sometimes made up of
+improbabilities, and Bernardet again experienced the same shock, the
+instinctive feeling that he had struck the trail, which he felt when the
+young man entered the wine shop.
+
+"That hat!" murmured Bernardet, sipping his wine and stealing glances
+over the rim of his glass at the young man. The unknown seemed to play
+directly into the police officer's hand. After standing by the door a
+few moments, and looking about the place, he walked over to the
+coffin-shaped table at which Bernardet was seated, bringing himself face
+to face with the officer. One of the waiters in his mourning dress came
+to take his order, and lighted another candle, which he placed where its
+rays fell directly on the young man's face. Thus Bernardet was able to
+study him at his ease. The pale face, with its expression, uneasy and
+slightly intense, struck Bernardet at once. That white face, with its
+black beard, with its gleaming eyes, was not to be passed by with a
+casual glance. The waiter placed a glass of brandy before him; he placed
+his elbows on the table and leaned his chin upon his hands. He was
+evidently not a habitué of the place nor a resident of the quarter.
+There was something foreign about his appearance. His glance was steady,
+as that of one who searches the horizon, looks at running water,
+contemplates the sea, asking for some "good luck" of the unknown.
+
+"It would be strange," thought Bernardet, "if a simple hat and no other
+clew should put us upon the track of the man for whom we are searching."
+
+At once, with the ingenuity of a master of dramatic art, the agent began
+to plot, and to put into action what lawyers, pleading and turning and
+twisting a cause this way and that, call _an effect_. He waited until
+the manager informed them that they were about to pass into the Cave of
+Death, and gave them all an invitation into the adjoining hall; then,
+profiting by the general movement, he approached the unknown, and,
+almost shoulder to shoulder, he walked along beside him, through a
+narrow, dark passage to a little room, where, on a small stage stood,
+upright, an empty coffin.
+
+It was a doleful spectacle, which the Cabaret du Squelette (the wine
+shop of the skeleton) offered to its clientèle of idle loungers and
+morbid curiosity seekers attracted to its halls by these exhibitions.
+Bernardet knew it all very well, and he knew by just what play of
+lights, what common chemical illuminations, they gave to the lookers on
+the sinister illusion of the decomposition of a corpse in its narrow
+home. This phantasmagoria, to which the people from the Boulevard came,
+in order to be amused, he had seen many times in the little theatres in
+the fairs at Neuilly. The proprietor of the cabaret had explained it to
+him; he had been curious and very keen about it, and so he followed the
+crowd into this little hall, to look once more at the image of a man in
+the coffin. He knew well to what purpose he could put it. The place was
+full. Men and women were standing about; the black walls made the narrow
+place look still smaller. Occasional bizarre pleasantries were heard and
+nervous laughs rang out. Why is it, that no matter how sceptical people
+may be, the idea, the proximity, the appearance of death gives them an
+impression of uneasiness, a singular sensation which is often displayed
+in nervous laughs or sepulchral drolleries?
+
+Bernardet had not left the side of the young man with the gray felt hat.
+He could see his face distinctly in the light of the little hall, and
+could study it at his ease. In the shadows which lurked about them the
+young man's face seemed like a white spot. The officer's sharp eyes
+never left it for a moment.
+
+The manager now asked if some one would try the experiment. This was to
+step into the open coffin--that box, as he said--"from which your
+friends, your neighbors, can see you dematerialize and return to
+nothingness."
+
+"Come, my friends," he continued, in his ironical tones, "this is a fine
+thing; it will permit your best friends to see you deliquesce! Are there
+any married people here? It is only a question of tasting, in advance,
+the pleasures of a widowhood. Would you like to see your husband
+disappear, my sister? My brother, do you wish to see your wife
+decompose? Sacrifice yourselves, I beg of you! Come! Come up here! Death
+awaits you!"
+
+They laughed, but here and there a laugh sounded strident or hysterical;
+the laugh did not ring true, but had the sound of cracked crystal. No
+one stirred. This parody of death affected even these hardened
+spectators.
+
+"Oh, well, my friends, there is a cadaver belonging to the establishment
+which we can use. It is a pity! You may readily understand that we do
+not take the dead for companions."
+
+As no one among the spectators would enter the coffin, the manager, with
+a gesture, ordered one of the supernumeraries of the cabaret to enter;
+from an open door the figurant glided across the stage and entered the
+coffin, standing upright. The manager wrapped him about with a shroud,
+leaving only the pale face of the pretended dead man exposed above this
+whiteness. The man smiled.
+
+"He laughs, Messieurs, he laughs still!" said the manager. "You will
+soon see him pay for that laugh. '_Rome rit et mourut!_' as Bossuet
+said."
+
+Some of the audience shouted applause to this quotation from a famous
+author. Bernardet did not listen; he was studying from a corner of his
+eye his neighbor's face. The man gazed with a sort of fascination at
+this fantastic performance which was taking place before him. He
+frowned, he bit his lips; his eyes were almost ferocious in expression.
+The figurant in the coffin continued to laugh.
+
+"Look! look keenly!" went on the manager, "you will see your brother
+dematerialize after becoming changed in color. The flesh will disappear
+and you will see his skeleton. Think, think, my brothers, this is the
+fate which awaits you, perhaps, soon, on going away from here; think of
+the various illnesses and deaths by accidents which await you!
+Contemplate the magic spectacle offered by the Cabaret du Squelette and
+remember that you are dust and that to dust you must return! Make,
+wisely, this reflection, which the intoxicated man made to another man
+in like condition, but asleep. 'And that is how I shall be on Sunday!'
+While waiting, my brothers and sisters, for nothingness, look at the
+dematerialization of your contemporary if you please!"
+
+The play of lights, while the man was talking, began to throw a greenish
+pallor and to make spots at first transparent upon the orbits of the
+eyes, then, little by little, the spots seemed to grow stronger, to
+blacken, to enlarge. The features, lightly picked out, appeared to
+change gradually, to take on gray and confused tints, to slowly
+disappear as under a veil, a damp vapor which covered, devoured that
+face, now unrecognizable! It has been said that the manner in which this
+phenomenon was managed was a remarkable thing; it is true, for this
+human body seemed literally to dissolve before this curious crowd, now
+become silent and frightened. The work of death was accomplished there
+publicly, thanks to the illusion of lighting. The livid man who smiled a
+few moments before was motionless, fixed, then passing through some
+singular changes, the flesh seemed to fall from him in----
+
+Suddenly the play of lights made him disappear from the eyes of the
+spectators and they saw, thanks to reflections made by mirrors, only a
+skeleton. It was the world of spectres and the secret of the tombs
+revealed to the crowd by a kind of scientific magic lantern.
+
+Bernardet did not desire to wait longer to strike his blow--this was the
+exact moment to do it--the psychological moment!
+
+The eager look of the man in the sombrero revealed a deep trouble. There
+was in this look something more than the curiosity excited by a novel
+spectacle. The muscles of his pale face twitched as with physical
+suffering; in his eyes Bernardet read an internal agony.
+
+"Ah!" thought the police officer, "the living eye is a book which one
+can read, as well as a dead man's eye."
+
+Upon the stage the lights were rendering even more sinister the figurant
+who was giving to this morbidly curious crowd the comedy of death. One
+would have now thought it was one of those atrocious paintings made in
+the studios of certain Spanish painters in the _putridero_ of a Valles
+Leal. The flesh, by a remarkable scientific combination of lights, was
+made to seem as if falling off, and presented the horrible appearance of
+a corpse in a state of decomposition. The lugubrious vision made a very
+visible shudder pass over the audience. Then Bernardet, drawing himself
+up to his full height so as to get a good view of the face of this man
+so much taller, and approaching as near to him as possible, in fact, so
+that his elbow and upper arm touched the young man's, he slowly,
+deliberately dropped, one by one, these words:
+
+"That is about how M. Rovère ought to be now"----
+
+And suddenly the young man's face expressed a sensation of fright, as
+one sees in the face of a pedestrian who suddenly finds that he is about
+to step upon a viper.
+
+"Or how he will be soon!" added the little man, with an amiable smile.
+Bernardet dissimulated under this amiability an intense joy. Holding his
+arm and elbow in an apparently careless manner close to his neighbor as
+he pronounced Rovère's name, Bernardet felt his neighbor's whole body
+tremble, and that he gave a very perceptible start. Why had he been so
+quickly moved by an unknown name if it had not recalled to his mind some
+frightful thought? The man might, of course, know, as the public did,
+all the details of the crime, but, with his strong, energetic face, his
+resolute look, he did not appear like a person who would be troubled by
+the recital of a murder, the description of a bloody affray, or even by
+the frightful scene which had just passed before his eyes in the hall.
+
+"A man of that stamp is not chicken-hearted," thought Bernardet. "No!
+no!" Hearing those words evoked the image of the dead man, Rovère; the
+man was not able to master his violent emotion, and he trembled, as if
+under an electrical discharge. The shudder had been violent, of short
+duration, however, as if he had mastered his emotion by his strong will.
+In his involuntary movement he had displayed a tragic eloquence.
+Bernardet had seen in the look, in the gesture, in the movement of the
+man's head, something of trouble, of doubt, of terror, as in a flash of
+lightning in the darkness of night one sees the bottom of a pool.
+
+Bernardet smilingly said to him:
+
+"This sight is not a gay one!"
+
+"No," the man answered, and he also attempted to smile.
+
+He looked back to the stage, where the sombre play went on.
+
+"That poor Rovère!" Bernardet said.
+
+The other man now looked at Bernardet as if to read his thoughts and to
+learn what signification the repetition of the same name had. Bernardet
+sustained, with a naïve look, this mute interrogation. He allowed
+nothing of his thoughts to be seen in the clear, childlike depths of his
+eyes. He had the air of a good man, frightened by a terrible murder, and
+who spoke of the late victim as if he feared for himself. He waited,
+hoping that the man would speak.
+
+In some of Bernardet's readings he had come across the magic rule
+applicable to love: "Never go! Wait for the other to come!"--"_Nec ire,
+fac venire_"--applicable also to hate, to that duel of magnetism between
+the hunted man and the police spy, and Bernardet waited for the other to
+"come!"
+
+Brusquely, after a silence, while on the little stage the transformation
+was still going on, the man asked in a dry tone:
+
+"Why do you speak to me of M. Rovère?"
+
+Bernardet affably replied: "I? Because every one talks of it. It is the
+actuality of the moment. I live in that quarter. It was quite near there
+that it happened, the affair"----
+
+"I know!" interrupted the other.
+
+The unknown had not pronounced ten words in questioning and replying,
+and yet Bernardet found two clues simply insignificant--terrible in
+reality. "I know!" was the man's reply, in a short tone, as if he wished
+to push aside, to thrust away, a troublesome thought. The tone, the
+sound of the words, had struck Bernardet. But one word especially--the
+word Monsieur before Rovère's name. "Monsieur Rovère? Why did he speak
+to me of Monsieur Rovère?" Bernardet thought.
+
+It seemed, then, that he knew the dead man.
+
+All the people gathered in this little hall, if asked in regard to this
+murder would have said: "Rovère!" "The Rovère affair!" "The Rovère
+murder!" Not one who had not known the victim would have said:
+
+"Monsieur Rovère!"
+
+The man knew him then. This simple word, in the officer's opinion, meant
+much.
+
+The manager now announced that, having become a skeleton, the dear
+brother who had lent himself to this experiment would return to his
+natural state, "fresher and rosier than before." He added, pleasantly,
+"A thing which does not generally happen to ordinary skeletons!"
+
+This vulgar drollery caused a great laugh, which the audience heartily
+indulged in. It made an outlet for their pent-up feelings, and they all
+felt as if they had awakened from a nightmare. The man in the sombrero,
+whose pale face was paler than before, was the only one who did not
+smile. He even frowned fiercely (noted by Bernardet) when the manager
+added:
+
+"You are not in the habit of seeing a dead man resuscitated the next
+day. Between us, it would keep the world pretty full."
+
+"Evidently," thought Bernardet, "my young gentleman is ill at ease."
+
+His only thought was to find out his name, his personality, to establish
+his identity and to learn where he had spent his life, and especially
+his last days. But how?
+
+He did not hesitate long. He left the place, even before the man in the
+coffin had reappeared, smiling at the audience. He glided through the
+crowd, repeating, "Pardon!" "I beg pardon!" traversed rapidly the hall
+where newcomers were conversing over their beverages, and stepped out
+into the street, looked up and down. A light fog enveloped everything,
+and the gaslights and lights in the shop windows showed ghostly through
+it. The passers-by, the cabs, the tramways, bore a spectral look.
+
+What Bernardet was searching for was a policeman. He saw two chatting
+together and walking slowly along under the leafless trees. In three
+steps, at each step turning his head to watch the people coming out of
+the cabaret, he reached the men. While speaking to them he did not take
+his eyes from the door of that place where he had left the young man in
+the gray felt hat.
+
+"Dagonin," he said, "you must follow me, if you please, and 'pull me
+in!' I am going to pick a drunken quarrel with a particular person.
+Interfere and arrest us both. Understand?"
+
+"Perfectly," Dagonin replied.
+
+He looked at his comrade, who carried his hand to his shako and saluted
+Bernardet.
+
+The little man who had given his directions in a quick tone, was already
+far away. He stood near the door of the cabaret gazing searchingly at
+each person who came out. The looks he cast were neither direct,
+menacing nor even familiar. He had pulled his hat down to his eyebrows,
+and he cast side glances at the crowd pouring from the door of the wine
+shop.
+
+He was astonished that the man in the sombrero had not yet appeared.
+Possibly he had stopped, on his way out, in the front hall. Glancing
+through the open door, Bernardet saw that he was right. The young man
+was seated at one of those coffin-shaped oaken tables, with a glass of
+greenish liquor before him. "He needs alcohol to brace him up," growled
+the officer.
+
+The door was shut again.
+
+"I can wait till he has finished his absinthe," said Bernardet to
+himself.
+
+He had not long to wait. After a small number of persons had left the
+place, the door opened and the man in the gray felt hat appeared,
+stopped on the threshold, and, as Bernardet had done, scanned the
+horizon and the street. Bernardet turned his back and seemed to be
+walking away from the wine shop, leaving the man free. With a keen
+glance or two over his shoulder toward him, Bernardet crossed the street
+and hurried along at a rapid pace, in order to gain on the young man,
+and by this manoeuvre to find himself directly in front of the
+unknown. The man seemed to hesitate, walked quickly down the Boulevard a
+few steps toward the Place Pigalle, in the direction where Rovère's
+apartments were, but suddenly stopped, turned on his heel, repassed the
+Cabaret du Squelette, and went toward the Moulin Rouge, which at first,
+Bernardet thought, he was about to enter. As he stood there the vanes of
+the Moulin Rouge, turning about, lighted up the windows of the opposite
+buildings and made them look as if they were on fire. At last, obeying
+another impulse, he suddenly crossed the Boulevard, as if to return
+into Paris, leaving Montmartre, the cabarets, and Rovère's house behind
+him. He walked briskly along, and ran against a man--a little man--whom
+he had not noticed, who seemed to suddenly detach himself from the wall,
+and who fell against his breast, hiccoughing and cursing in vicious
+tones.
+
+"Imbecile!"
+
+The young man wished to push away the intoxicated man who, with hat over
+his eyes, clung to him and kept repeating:
+
+"The street--the street--is it not free--the street?"
+
+Yes, it was certainly a drunken man. Not a man in a smock, but a little
+fellow, a bourgeois, with hat askew and thick voice.
+
+"I--I am not stopping you. The street is free--I tell you!"
+
+"Well, if it is free, I want it!"
+
+The voice was vigorous, but showed sudden anger, a strident tone, a
+slight foreign accent, Spanish, perhaps.
+
+The drunken man probably thought him insolent for, still hiccoughing, he
+answered:
+
+"Oh, you want it, do you? You want it? I want it! The king says 'we
+wish!' don't you know?"
+
+With another movement, he lost his equilibrium and half fell, his head
+hanging over, and he clutched the man he held in a sudden embrace.
+
+"It is mine also--the street--you know!"
+
+With sudden violence, the man disembarrassed himself of this caressing
+creature; he thrust aside his clinging arms with a movement so quick and
+strong that the intoxicated man, this time, fell, his hat rolled into
+the gutter, and he lay on the sidewalk.
+
+But immediately, with a bound, he was on his feet, and as the man went
+calmly on his way, he followed him, seized his coat and clutched him so
+tightly that he could not proceed.
+
+"Pardon;" he said, "you cannot go away like that!"
+
+Then, as the light from a gas lamp fell on the little man's face, the
+young man recognized his neighbor of the cabaret, who had said to him:
+
+"See, that is how Rovère must look!"
+
+At this moment, Dagonin and his comrade appeared on the scene and laid
+vigorous hands on them both; the young man made a quick, instinctive
+movement toward his right pocket, where, no doubt, he kept a revolver or
+knife. Bernardet seized his wrist, he twisted it and said:
+
+"Do nothing rash!"
+
+The young man was very strong, but the huge Dagonin had Herculean biceps
+and the other man did not lack muscles. Fright, moreover, seemed to
+paralyze this tall, young gallant, who, as he saw that he was being
+hustled toward a police station, demanded:
+
+"Have you arrested me, and why?"
+
+"First for having struck me," Bernardet replied, still bareheaded, and
+to whom a gamin now handed his soiled hat, saying to him:
+
+"Is this yours, Monsieur Bernardet?"
+
+Bernardet recognized in his own quarter! That was glory!
+
+The man seemed to wish to defend himself and still struggled, but one
+remark of Dagonin's seemed to pacify him:
+
+"No rebellion! There is nothing serious about your arrest. Do not make
+it worse."
+
+The young man really believed that it was only a slight matter and he
+would be liberated at once. The only thing that disquieted him was that
+this intoxicated man, suddenly become sober, had spoken to him as he did
+a few moments before in the cabaret.
+
+The four men walked quickly along in the shadow of the buildings,
+through the almost deserted streets, where the shopkeepers were putting
+out their lights and closing up their shops. Scarcely any one who met
+them would have realized that three of these men were taking the fourth
+to a police station.
+
+A tri-color flag floated over a door lighted by a red lantern; the four
+men entered the place and found themselves in a narrow, warm hall, where
+the agents of the police were either sleeping on benches or reading
+around the stove by the light of the gas jets above their heads.
+
+Bernardet, looking dolefully at his broken and soiled hat, begged the
+young man to give his name and address to the Chief of the Post. The
+young man then quickly understood that his questioner of the Cabaret du
+Squelette had caught him in a trap. He looked at him with an expression
+of violent anger--of concentrated rage.
+
+Then he said:
+
+"My name? What do you want of that? I am an honest man. Why did you
+arrest me? What does it mean?"
+
+"Your name?" repeated Bernardet.
+
+The man hesitated.
+
+"Oh, well! I am called Pradès. Does that help you any?"
+
+The man wrote: "Pradès. P-r-a-d-è-s with an accent. Pradès. First name?"
+
+"Charles, if you wish!"
+
+"Oh!" said Bernardet, noticing the slight difference in the tone of his
+answer. "We wish nothing. We wish only the truth."
+
+"I have told it."
+
+Charles Pradès furnished some further information in regard to himself.
+He was staying at a hotel in the Rue de Paradis-Poissonsière, a small
+hotel used by commercial travelers and merchants of the second class. He
+had been in Paris only a month.
+
+Where was he from? He said that he came from Sydney, where he was
+connected with a commercial house. Or rather he had given up the
+situation to come to Paris to seek his fortune. But while speaking of
+Sydney he had in his rather rambling answers let fall the name of Buenos
+Ayres, and Bernardet remembered that Buenos Ayres was the place where M.
+Rovère had been French Consul. The officer paid no attention to this at
+the time. For what good? Pradès's real examination would be conducted by
+M. Ginory. He, Bernardet, was not an examining magistrate. He was the
+ferret who hunted out criminals.
+
+This Pradès was stupefied, then furious, when, the examination over, he
+learned that he was not to be immediately set at liberty.
+
+What! An absurd quarrel, a collision without a wound, in a street in
+Paris, was sufficient to hold a man and make him pass the night in the
+station house, with all the vagabonds of both sexes collected there!
+
+"You may bemoan your fate to yourself to-morrow morning!" said
+Bernardet.
+
+In the meantime they searched this man, who, very pale, making visibly
+powerful efforts to control himself, biting his lips and his black
+beard, while they examined his pocketbook, while they looked at a
+Spanish knife with a short blade, which he had (Bernardet had divined it
+at the time of his arrest) in his right pocket.
+
+The pocketbook revealed nothing. It contained some receipted weekly
+bills of the hotel in the Rue de Paradis, some envelopes without
+letters, without stamps and bearing the name, "Charles Pradès,
+Merchant," two bank bills of 100 francs--nothing more.
+
+Bernardet very simply asked Pradès how it was that he had upon his
+person addressed letters which he evidently had not received, as they
+were not stamped. He replied:
+
+"They are not letters. They are addresses which I gave instead of
+visiting cards, as I had not had time to procure cards."
+
+"Then the addresses are in your writing?"
+
+"Yes," Pradès answered.
+
+The police officer looked at them again; then, saluting the brigadier
+and his men, wished them good-night, and even added a little gesture,
+rather mocking, in the direction of the arrested man. Pradès made an
+angry, almost menacing, movement toward Bernardet. The guards standing
+about pulled him back, while the plump, smiling little man, caressing
+his sandy mustache and humming a tune, went out into the street.
+
+As he reached the passage which led to his house this couplet came
+merrily from his lips as walked quickly along:
+
+        "Prends ton fusil, Gregoire,
+        Prends ta gourde pourboire,
+        Nos Messieurs sont partis
+        A la chasse aux perdrix."
+
+One would have taken M. Bernardet for a happy little bourgeois, going
+home from some theatre through the deserted streets and repeating a
+verse from some vaudeville, rather than a police spy who had just
+secured a prize. He walked quickly, he walked gaily. He reached his
+home, where Mme. Bernardet, always rosy and pleasant, awaited him, and
+where his three little girls were sleeping. He felt that, like the Roman
+emperor, he had not lost his day.
+
+He again hummed the quatrain, and, although not in a loud tone, still it
+sounded like a far off fanfare of victory in the gray fog of this Paris
+night.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+M. GINORY was not without uneasiness when he thought of the detention of
+Jacques Dantin. Without doubt, all prisoners, all accused persons are
+reticent; they try to hide their guilt under voluntary silence. They do
+not speak, because they have sworn not to. They are bound, one knows not
+by whom, by an oath which they cannot break. It is the ordinary system
+of the guilty who cannot defend themselves. Mystery seems to them
+safety.
+
+But Dantin, intimately acquainted with Rovère's life, might be
+acquainted with some secret which he could not disclose and which did
+not pertain to him at all. What secret? Had not an examining magistrate
+a right to know everything? Had not an accused man a right to speak?
+Either Dantin had nothing to reveal and he was playing a comedy and was
+guilty, or, if by a few words, by a confidence made to the magistrate he
+could escape an accusation, recover his liberty, without doubt he would
+speak after having kept an inexplicable silence. How could one suppose
+that an innocent man would hold, for a long time, to this mute system?
+
+The discovery of the portrait in Mme. Colard's shop ought, naturally, to
+give to the affair a new turn. The arrest of Charles Pradès brought an
+important element to these researches. He would be examined by M. Ginory
+the next morning, after having been questioned by the Commissary of
+Police.
+
+Bernardet, spruce, freshly shaven, was there, and seemed in his
+well-brushed redingote, like a little abbé come to assist at some
+curious ceremony.
+
+On the contrary, Pradès, after a sleepless night, a night of agony,
+paler than the evening before, his face fierce and its muscles
+contracted, had a haggard expression, and he blinked his eyes like a
+night bird suddenly brought into glaring sunlight. He repeated before
+the Examining Magistrate what he had said to the brigadier. But his
+voice, vibrant a few hours before, had become heavy, almost raucous, as
+the haughty expression of his face had become sullen and tragic.
+
+The Examining Magistrate had cited Mme. Colard, the shopkeeper, to
+appear before him. She instantly recognized in this Pradès the man who
+had sold her the little panel by Paul Baudry.
+
+He denied it. He did not know of what they were talking. He had never
+seen this woman. He knew nothing about any portrait.
+
+"It belonged to M. Rovère," the magistrate replied, "M. Rovère, the
+murdered man; M. Rovère, who was consul at Buenos Ayres, and you spoke,
+yesterday, of Buenos Ayres, in the examination at the station house in
+the Rue de la Rochefoucauld."
+
+"M. Rovère? Buenos Ayres?" repeated the young man, rolling his sombrero
+around his fingers.
+
+He repeated that he did not know the ex-Consul, that he had never been
+in South America, that he had come from Sydney.
+
+Bernardet, at this moment, interrupted him by taking his hat from him
+without saying a word, and Pradès cast a very angry look at the little
+man.
+
+M. Ginory understood Bernardet's move and approved with a smile. He
+looked in the inside of the sombrero which Bernardet handed to him.
+
+The hat bore the address of Gordon, Smithson & Co., Berner Street,
+London.
+
+"But, after all," thought the Magistrate, "Buenos Ayres is one of the
+markets for English goods."
+
+"That is a hat bought at Sydney," Pradès (who had understood) explained.
+
+Before the bold, decided, almost violent affirmations which Mme. Colard
+made that this was certainly the seller of the portrait, the young man
+lost countenance a little. He kept saying over and over: "You deceive
+yourself. Madame, I have never spoken to you, I have never seen you."
+
+When M. Ginory asked her if she still persisted in saying that this was
+the man who had sold her the picture, she said:
+
+"Do I still persist? With my neck under the guillotine I would persist,"
+and she kept repeating: "I am sure of it! I am sure of it!"
+
+This preliminary examination brought about no decisive result. It was
+certain that, if this portrait had been in the possession of this young
+man and been sold by him, that he, Charles Pradès, was an accomplice of
+Dantin's, if not the author of the crime. They ought, then, to be
+brought face to face, and, possibly, this might bring about an immediate
+result. And why not have this meeting take place at once, before Pradès
+was sent where Dantin was, at Mazas?
+
+M. Ginory, who had uttered this word "Mazas," noticed the expression of
+terror which flashed across and suddenly transfigured the young man's
+face.
+
+Pradès stammered:
+
+"Then--you will hold me? Then--I am not free?"
+
+M. Ginory did not reply. He gave an order that this Pradès should be
+guarded until the arrival of Dantin from Mazas.
+
+In Mazas, in that walled prison, in the cell which had already made him
+ill, Jacques Dantin sat. This man, with the trooper's air, seemed almost
+to be in a state of collapse. When the guard came to his cell he drew
+himself up and endeavored to collect all his energy; and when the door
+was opened and he was called he appeared quite like himself. When he saw
+the prison wagon which had brought him to Mazas and now awaited to take
+him to the Palais de Justice he instinctively recoiled; then, recovering
+himself, he entered the narrow vehicle.
+
+The idea, the sensation that he was so near all this life--yet so
+far--that he was going through these streets, filled with carriages,
+with men and women who were free, gave him a desperate, a nervous sense
+of irritation.
+
+The air which they breathed, he breathed and felt fan his brow--but
+through a grating. They arrived at the Palais and Jacques Dantin
+recognized the staircases which he had previously mounted, that led to
+the Examining Magistrate's room. He entered the narrow room where M.
+Ginory awaited him. Dantin saluted the Magistrate with a gesture which,
+though courteous, seemed to have a little bravado in it; as a salutation
+with a sword before a duel. Then he glanced around, astonished to see,
+between two guards, a man whom he did not recognize.
+
+M. Ginory studied them. If he knew this Pradès, who also curiously
+returned his look, Jacques Dantin was a great comedian, because no
+indication, not the slightest involuntary shudder, not the faintest
+trace of an expression of having seen him before, crossed his face. Even
+M. Ginory's keen eyes could detect nothing. He had asked that Bernardet
+be present at the meeting, and the little man's face, become serious,
+almost severe, was turned, with eager interrogation in its expression,
+toward Dantin. Bernardet also was unable to detect the faintest emotion
+which could be construed into an acknowledgment of ever having seen this
+young man before. Generally prisoners would, unconsciously, permit a
+gesture, a glance, a something, to escape them when they were brusquely
+confronted, unexpectedly, with some accomplice. This time not a muscle
+of Dantin's face moved, not an eyelash quivered.
+
+M. Ginory motioned Jacques Dantin to a seat directly in front of him,
+where the light would fall full upon his face. Pointing out Pradès, he
+asked:
+
+"Do you recognize this man?"
+
+Dantin, after a second or two, replied:
+
+"No; I have never seen him."
+
+"Never?"
+
+"I believe not; he is unknown to me!"
+
+"And you, Pradès, have you ever seen Jacques Dantin?"
+
+"Never," said Pradès, in his turn. His voice seemed hoarse, compared
+with the brief, clear response made by Dantin.
+
+"He is, however, the original of the portrait which you sold to Mme.
+Colard."
+
+"The portrait?"
+
+"Look sharply at Dantin. Look at him well," repeated M. Ginory. "You
+must recognize that he is the original of the portrait in question."
+
+"Yes;" Pradès replied. His eyes were fixed upon the prisoner.
+
+"Ah!" the Magistrate joyously exclaimed, asking: "And how, tell me, did
+you so quickly recognize the original of the portrait which you saw only
+an instant in my room?"
+
+"I do not know," stammered Pradès, not comprehending the gravity of a
+question put in an insinuating, almost amiable tone.
+
+"Oh, well!" continued M. Ginory, still in a conciliating tone, "I am
+going to explain to you. It is certain that you recognize these
+features, because you had a long time in which to contemplate them;
+because you had it a long time in your hands when you were trying to
+pull off the frame."
+
+"The frame? What frame?" asked the young man stupefied, not taking his
+eyes from the Magistrate's face, which seemed to him endowed with some
+occult power. M. Ginory went on:
+
+"The frame which you had trouble in removing, since the scratches show
+in the wood. And what if, after taking the portrait to Mme. Colard's
+shop, we should find the frame in question at another place, at some
+other shop--that would not be very difficult," and M. Ginory smiled at
+Bernardet. "What if we could add another new deposition to that of Mme.
+Colard's? Yes; what if to that clear, decisive deposition we could add
+another--what would you have to say?"
+
+Silence! Pradès turned his head around, his eyes wandered about, as if
+searching to find an outlet or a support; gasping like a man who has
+been injured.
+
+Jacques Dantin looked at him at the same moment when the Magistrate,
+with a glance keener, more piercing than ever, seemed to search his very
+soul. The young man was now pallid and unmanned.
+
+At length Pradès pronounced some words. What did he want of him? What
+frame was he talking of? And who was this other dealer of whom the
+Magistrate spoke and whom he had called a second time? Where was this
+witness with "the new deposition?"
+
+"One is enough!" he said, casting a ferocious look at Mme. Colard, who,
+on a sign from M. Ginory, had entered, pale and full of fear.
+
+He added in a menacing tone:
+
+"One is even too much!"
+
+The fingers of his right hand contracted, as if around a knife handle.
+At this moment Bernardet, who was studying each gesture which the man
+made, was convinced that the murderer of Rovère was there. He saw that
+hand armed with the knife, the one which had been found in his pocket,
+striking his victim, gashing the ex-Consul's throat.
+
+But then, "Dantin?" An accomplice, without doubt. The head, of which the
+adventurer was the arm. Because, in the dead man's eye, Dantin's image
+appeared, reflected as clear proof, like an accusation, showing the
+person who was last seen in Rovère's supreme agony. Jacques Dantin was
+there--the eye spoke.
+
+Mme. Colard's testimony no longer permitted M. Ginory to doubt. This
+Charles Pradès was certainly the man who sold the portrait.
+
+Nothing could be proved except that the two men had never met. No sign
+of emotion showed that Dantin had ever seen the young man before. The
+latter alone betrayed himself when he was going to Mazas with the
+original of the portrait painted by Baudry.
+
+But, however, as the Magistrate underlined it with precision, the fact
+alone of recognizing Dantin constituted against Pradès a new charge.
+Added to the testimony, to the formal affirmation of the shopkeeper,
+this charge became grave.
+
+Coldly, M. Ginory said to his registrar:
+
+"An order!"
+
+Then, when Favarel had taken a paper engraved at the top, which Pradès
+tried to decipher, the Magistrate began to question him. And as M.
+Ginory spoke slowly, Favarel filled in the blank places which made a
+free man, a prisoner.
+
+"You are called?" demanded M. Ginory.
+
+"Pradès."
+
+"Your first name?"
+
+"Henri."
+
+"You said Charles to the Commissary of Police."
+
+"Henri-Charles--Charles--Henri."
+
+The Magistrate did not even make a sign to Favarel, seated before the
+table, and who wrote very quickly without M. Ginory dictating to him.
+
+"Your profession?" continued the Magistrate.
+
+"Commission merchant."
+
+"Your age?"
+
+"Twenty-eight."
+
+"Your residence?"
+
+"Sydney, Australia."
+
+And, upon this official paper, the replies were filled in, one by one,
+in the blank places:
+
+      COURT OF THE FIRST INSTANCE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE SEINE:
+
+     Warrant of Commitment against Pradès.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+     Note.--Write exactly the names, Christian names, professions,
+     age, residence and nature of charge.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+     Description Height metre centimetres
+
+     Forehead Nose
+
+     Eyes Mouth
+
+     Chin Eyebrows
+
+     Hair
+
+     General Appearance
+
+     We, Edmé-Armand-Georges Ginory, Examining Magistrate of the
+     Court of the First Instance of the Department of the Seine,
+     command and enjoin all officers and guards of the Public Force
+     to conduct to the Prison of Detention, called the Mazas, in
+     conformity to the Law, Pradès (Charles Henri), aged 28 years,
+     Commission Merchant from Sydney. Accused of complicity in the
+     murder of Louis-Pièrre Rovère. We direct the Director of said
+     house of detention to receive and hold him till further orders.
+     We command every man in the Public to lend assistance in order
+     to execute the present order, in case such necessity arises, to
+     which we attach our name and seal.
+
+     Made at the Palais de Justice, in Paris, the 12th of February,
+     1896.
+
+And below, the seal was attached to the order by the registrar. M.
+Ginory signed it, saying to Favarel:
+
+"The description must be left blank. They will fill it out after the
+measurements are taken."
+
+Then, Pradès, stupefied till now, not seeming to realize half that was
+passing around him, gave a sudden, violent start. A cry burst from him.
+
+"Arrested! Have you arrested me?"
+
+M. Ginory leaned over the table. He was calm and held his pen with which
+he had signed the order, suspended in the air. The young man rushed
+forward wild with anger, and if the guards had not held him back, he
+would have seized M. Ginory's fat neck with both hands. The guards held
+Pradès back, while the Examining Magistrate, carelessly pricking the
+table with his pen, gently said, with a smile:
+
+"All the same, more than one malefactor has betrayed himself in a fit of
+anger. I have often thought that it would take very little to get myself
+assassinated, when I had before me an accused person whom I felt was
+guilty and who would not confess. Take away the man!"
+
+While they were pushing Pradès toward the corridor he shouted:
+"_Canailles_." M. Ginory ordered that Dantin should be left alone with
+him. "Alone," he said to Bernardet, whose look was a little uneasy. The
+registrar half rose from his chair, picking up his papers and pushing
+them into the pockets of his much worn paper case.
+
+"No; you may remain, Favarel."
+
+"Well," said the Magistrate in a familiar tone, when he found himself
+face to face with Jacques Dantin. "Have you reflected?"
+
+Jacques Dantin, his lips pressed closely together, did not reply.
+
+"It is a counsellor--a counsellor of an especial kind--the cell. He who
+invented it"----
+
+"Yes;" Dantin brusquely interrupted. "The brain suffers between those
+walls. I have not slept since I went there. Not slept at all. Insomnia
+is killing me. It seems as if I should go crazy!"
+
+"Then?" asked M. Ginory.
+
+"Then"----
+
+Jacques Dantin looked fiercely at the registrar, who sat waiting, his
+pen over his ear, his elbows on the table, his chin on his hands.
+
+"Then, oh, well! Then, here it is, I wish to tell you all--all. But to
+you--to you"----
+
+"To me alone?"
+
+"Yes," said Dantin, with the same fierce expression.
+
+"My dear Favarel," the Magistrate began.
+
+The registrar had already risen. He slowly bowed and went out.
+
+"Now," said the Magistrate to Jacques Dantin, "you can speak."
+
+The man still hesitated.
+
+"Monsieur," he asked, "will any word said here be repeated, ought it or
+must it be repeated in a courtroom, at the Assizes, I know not
+where--anywhere before the public?"
+
+"That depends," said M. Ginory. "But what you know you owe to justice,
+whether it be a revelation, an accusation or a confession, I ask it of
+you."
+
+Still Dantin hesitated. Then the Magistrate spoke these words: "I demand
+it!"
+
+With a violent effort the prisoner began. "So be it! But it is to a man
+of honor, rather than to a Magistrate, to whom I address these words. If
+I have hesitated to speak, if I have allowed myself to be suspected and
+to be accused, it is because it seemed to me impossible, absolutely
+impossible, that this same truth should not be revealed--I do not know
+in what way--that it would become known to you without compelling me to
+disclose a secret which was not mine."
+
+"To an Examining Magistrate one may tell everything," said M. Ginory.
+"We have listened to confessions in our offices which are as inviolable
+as those of the confessional made to a priest."
+
+And now, after having accused Dantin of lying, believing that he was
+acting a comedy, after smiling disdainfully at that common invention--a
+vow which one could not break--the perception of a possibility entered
+the Magistrate's mind that this man might be sincere. Hitherto he had
+closed his heart against sympathy for this man; they had met in the
+mutual hostility.
+
+The manner in which Jacques Dantin approached the question, the
+resolution with which he spoke, no longer resembled the obstinate
+attitude which he had before assumed in this same room.
+
+Reflection, the prison--the cell, without doubt--a frightful and
+stifling cell--had done its work. The man who had been excited to the
+point of not speaking now wished to tell all.
+
+"Yes," he said, "since nothing has happened to convince you that I am
+not lying."
+
+"I am listening to you," said the Magistrate.
+
+Then, in a long, close conference, Jacques Dantin told M. Ginory his
+story. He related how, from early youth, he and Rovère had been close
+friends; of the warm affection which had always existed between them; of
+the shams and deceptions of which he had been guilty; of the bitterness
+of his ruined life; of an existence which ought to have been beautiful,
+and which, so useless, the life of a _viveur_, had almost made
+him--why?--how?--through need of money and a lack of moral sense--almost
+descend to crime.
+
+This Rovère, whom he was accused of killing, he loved, and, to tell the
+truth, in that strange and troublous existence which he had lived,
+Rovère had been the only true friend whom he had known. Rovère, a sort
+of pessimistic philosopher, a recluse, lycanthropic, after a life spent
+in feasting, having surfeited himself with pleasure, recognized also in
+his last years that disinterested affection is rare in this world, and
+his savage misanthropy softened before Jacques Dantin's warm
+friendship.
+
+"I continued to search for, in what is called pleasure and what as one's
+hair whitens becomes vice; in play; in the uproar of Paris,
+forgetfulness of life, of the dull life of a man growing old, alone,
+without home or family, an old, stupid fellow, whom the young people
+look at with hate and say to each other: 'Why is he still here?' Rovère,
+more and more, felt the need of withdrawing into solitude, thinking over
+his adventurous life, as bad and as ruined as mine, and he wished to see
+no one. A wolf, a wild boar in his lair! Can you understand this
+friendship between two old fellows, one of whom tried in every way to
+direct his thoughts from himself, and the other, waiting death in a
+corner of his fireside, solitary, unsociable?"
+
+"Perfectly! Go on!"
+
+And the magistrate, with eyes riveted upon Jacques Dantin, saw this man,
+excited, making light of this recital of the past; evoking remembrances
+of forgotten events, of this lost affection; lost, as all his life was.
+
+"This is not a conference; is it not so? You no longer believe that it
+is a comedy? I loved Rovère. Life had often separated us. He searched
+for fortune at the other end of the world. I made a mess of mine and ate
+it in Paris. But we always kept up our relations, and when he returned
+to France we were happy in again seeing each other. The grayer turned
+the hair, the more tender the heart became. I had always found him
+morose--from his twentieth year he always dragged after him a sinister
+companion--ennui. He had chosen a Consular career, to live far away, and
+in a fashion not at all like ours. I have often laughingly said to him
+that he probably had met with unrequited love; that he had experienced
+some unhappy passion. He said, no! I feigned to believe it. One is not
+sombre and melancholy like that without some secret grief. After all,
+there are others who do not feel any gayer with a smile on the lips.
+Sadness is no sign. Neither is gayety!"
+
+His face took on a weary, melancholy expression, which at first
+astonished the Magistrate; then he experienced a feeling of pity; he
+listened, silent and grave.
+
+"I will pass over all the details of our life, shall I not? My monologue
+would be too long. The years of youth passed with a rapidity truly
+astonishing; we come to the time when we found ourselves--he weary of
+life, established in his chosen apartments in the Boulevard de Clichy,
+with his paintings and books; sitting in front of his fire and awaiting
+death--I continuing to spur myself on like a foundered horse. Rovère
+moralized to me; I jeered at his sermons, and I went to sit by his
+fireside and talk over the past. One of his joys had been this portrait
+of me, painted by Paul Baudry. He had hung it up in his salon, at the
+corner of the chimney piece, at the left, and he often said to me:
+
+"'Dost thou know that when thou art not here I talk to it?'
+
+"I was not there very often. Parisian life draws us by its thousand
+attractions. The days which seem interminable when one is twenty rush by
+as if on wings when one is fifty. One has not even time to stop to see
+the friends one loves. At the last moment, if one is right, one ought to
+say, 'How I have cast to the winds everything precious which life has
+given me. How foolish I have been--how stupid.' Pay no attention to my
+philosophisms--the cell! Mazas forces one to think!
+
+"One day--it was one morning--on returning from the club where I had
+passed the night stupidly losing sums which would have given joy to
+hundreds of families, I found on my desk a message from Rovère. If one
+would look through my papers one would find it there--I kept it. Rovère
+begged me to come to him immediately. I shivered--a sharp presentiment
+of death struck me. The writing was trembling, unlike his own. I struck
+my forehead in anger. This message had been waiting for me since the
+night before, while I was spending the hours in gambling. If, when I
+hurried toward the Boulevard de Clichy, I had found Rovère dead on my
+arrival, I could not, believe me, have experienced greater despair. His
+assassination seemed to me atrocious; but I was at least able to assure
+him that his friendship was returned. I hastily read the telegram, threw
+myself into a fiacre, and hastened to his apartments. The woman who
+acted as housekeeper for him, Mme. Moniche, the portress, raising her
+arms as she opened the door for me, said:
+
+"'Ah! Monsieur, but Monsieur has waited for you. He has repeated your
+name all night. He nearly died, but he is better now.'
+
+"Rovère, sitting the night before by his fire, had been stricken by
+lateral paralysis, and as soon as he could hold a pen, in spite of the
+orders of the physician who had been quickly called, had written and
+sent the message to me some hours before.
+
+"As soon as he saw me he--the strong man, the mad misanthrope, silent
+and sombre--held me in his arms and burst into tears. His embrace was
+that of a man who concentrates in one being all that remains of hope.
+
+"'Thou! thou art here!' he said in a low tone. 'If thou knewest!'
+
+"I was moved to the depths of my heart. That manly face, usually so
+energetic, wore an expression of terror which was in some way almost
+childish, a timorous fright. The tears rose in his eyes.
+
+"'Oh! how I have waited for thee! how I have longed for thee!'
+
+"He repeated this phrase with anxious obstinacy. Then he seemed to be
+suffocating. Emotion! The sight of me recalled to him the long agony of
+that night when he thought that he was about to die without parting with
+me for the last time.
+
+"'For what I have to tell thee'----
+
+"He shook his head.
+
+"'It is the secret of my life!'
+
+"He was lying on a sort of sick chair or lounge, in the library where he
+passed his last days with his books. He made me sit down beside him. He
+took my hand and said:
+
+"'I am going to die. I believed that the end had come last night. I
+called thee. Oh, well, if I had died there is one being in the world who
+would not have had the fortune which--I have'----
+
+"He lowered his voice as if he thought we were spied upon, as if some
+one could hear.
+
+"'I have a daughter. Yes, even from thee I have hidden this secret,
+which tortures me. A daughter who loves me and who has not the right to
+confess this tenderness, no more than I have the right to give her my
+name. Ah! our youth, sad youth! I might have had a home to-day, a
+fireside of my own, a dear one near me, and instead of that, an
+affection of which I am ashamed and which I have hidden even from thee,
+Jacques, from thee, dost thou comprehend?'
+
+"I remember each of Rovère's words as if I was hearing them now. This
+conversation with my poor friend is among the most poignant yet most
+precious of my remembrances. With much emotion, which distressed me, the
+poor man revealed to me the secret which he had believed it his duty to
+hide from me so many years, and I vowed to him--I swore to him on my
+honor, and that is why I hesitated to speak, or rather refused to speak,
+not wishing to compromise any one, neither the dead nor living--I swore
+to him, Monsieur le Juge, to repeat nothing of what he told me to any
+one, to any one but to her"----
+
+"Her?" interrogated M. Ginory.
+
+"His daughter," Dantin replied.
+
+The Examining Magistrate recalled that visitor in black, who had been
+seen occasionally at Rovère's apartments, and the little romance of
+which Paul Rodier had written in his paper--the romance of the Woman in
+Black!
+
+"And this daughter?"
+
+"She bears," said Dantin, with a discouraged gesture, "the name of the
+father which the law gives her, and this name is a great name, an
+illustrious name, that of a retired general officer, living in one of
+the provinces, a widower, and who adores the girl who is another man's
+child. The mother is dead. The father has never known. When dying, the
+mother revealed the secret to her daughter. She came, by command of the
+dead, to see Rovère, but as a Sister of Charity, faithful to the name
+which she bears. She does not wish to marry; she will never leave the
+crippled old soldier who calls her his daughter, and who adores her."
+
+"Oh!" said M. Ginory, remaining mute a moment before this very simple
+drama, and in which, in that moment of reflection, he comprehended, he
+analyzed, nearly all of the hidden griefs, the secret tears, the stifled
+sobs, the stolen kisses. "And that is why you kept silent?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, Monsieur. Oh! but I could not endure the torture any longer, and
+not seeing the expected release any nearer, I would have spoken, I would
+have spoken to escape that cell, that sense of suffocation, I endured
+there. It seemed to me, however, that I owed it to my dead friend not to
+reveal his secret to any one, not even to you. I shall never forget
+Rovère's joy, when relieved of the burden, by the confidence which he
+had reposed in me, he said to me, that now that she who was his
+daughter, and was poor, living at Blois only on the pension of a retired
+officer to whom she had appointed herself nurse, knowing that she was
+not his daughter, this innocent child, who was paying with a life of
+devotion for the sins of two guilty ones, would at least have happiness
+at last.
+
+"She is young, and the one for whom she cares cannot live always. My
+fortune will give her a dowry. And then!"
+
+"It was to me to whom he confided this fortune. He had very little money
+with his notary. Erratic and distrustful, Rovère kept his valuables in
+his safe, as he kept his books in his library. It seemed that he was a
+collector, picking up all kinds of things. Avaricious? No; but he wished
+to have about him, under his hand, everything which belonged to him. He
+possibly may have wished to give what he had directly to the one to whom
+it seemed good to him to give it, and confide it to me in trust.
+
+"I regret not having asked him directly that day what he counted on
+doing with his fortune and how he intended enriching his child, whom he
+had not the right to recognize. I dared, or, rather, I did not think of
+it. I experienced a strong emotion when I saw my friend enfeebled and
+almost dying. I had known him so different, so handsome. Oh! those poor,
+sad, restless eyes, that lowered voice, as if he feared an enemy was
+listening! Illness had quickly, brutally changed that vigorous man,
+suddenly old and timorous.
+
+"I went away from that first interview much distressed, carrying a
+secret which seemed to me a heavy and cruel one; and which made me think
+of the uselessness, the wickedness, the vain loves of a ruined life. But
+I felt that Rovère owed truly his fortune to that girl who, the next
+day after the death of the one whom she had piously attended, found
+herself poor and isolated in a little house in a steep street, near the
+Château, above Blois. I felt that, whatever this unknown father left,
+ought not to go to distant relatives, who cared nothing for him; did not
+even know him; were ignorant of his sufferings and perhaps even of his
+existence, and who by law would inherit.
+
+"A dying man, yes! There could be no question about it, and Dr.
+Vilandry, whom I begged to accompany me to see my friend, did not hide
+it from me. Rovère was dying of a kidney difficulty, which had made
+rapid progress.
+
+"It was necessary, then, since he was not alone in the world, that he
+should think of the one of whom he had spoken and whom he loved.
+
+"'For I love her, that child whom I have no right to name. I love her!
+She is good, tender, admirable. If I did not see that she resembled
+me--for she does resemble me--I should tell thee that she was beautiful.
+I would be proud to cry aloud: "This is my daughter!" To promenade with
+her on my arm--and I must hide this secret from all the world. That is
+my torture! And it is the chastisement of all that has not been right in
+my life. Ah! sad, unhappy loves!' That same malediction for the past
+came to his lips as it had come to his thoughts. The old workman,
+burdened with labor throughout the week, who could promenade on the
+Boulevard de Clichy on Sunday, with his daughter on his arm, was happier
+than Rovère. And--a strange thing, sentiment of shame and
+remorse--feeling himself traveling fast to his last resting-place in the
+cemetery, he expressed no wish to see that child, to send for her to
+come from Blois under some pretext or other, easy enough to find.
+
+"No, he experienced a fierce desire for solitude, he shrunk from an
+interview, in which he feared all his grief would rush to his lips in a
+torrent of words. He feared for himself, for his weakness, for the
+strange feeling he experienced in his head.
+
+"'It seems as if it oscillated upon my shoulders,' he said. 'If Marthe
+came (and he repeated the name as a child would have pronounced it who
+was just learning to name the letters of a word) I would give her but
+the sad spectacle of a broken-down man, and leave on her mind only the
+impression of a human ruin. And then--and then--not to see her! not to
+have the right to see her! that is all right--it is my chastisement!'
+
+"Let it be so! I understood. I feared that an interview would be mortal.
+He had been so terribly agitated when he had sent for me that other
+time.
+
+"But I, at least, wished to recall to him his former wish which he had
+expressed of providing for the girl's future. I desired that he should
+make up for the past, since money is one of the forms of reparation. But
+I dared not speak to him again in regard to it, or of that trust of
+which he had spoken.
+
+"He said to me, this strong man whom Death had never frightened, and
+whom he had braved many times, he said to me now, weakened by this
+illness which was killing him hour by hour:
+
+"If I knew that my end was near I would decide--but I have time."
+
+"Time! Each day brought him a little nearer to that life about which I
+feared to say to him: 'The time has come!' The fear, in urging him to a
+last resolution, of seeming like an executioner whose presence seemed to
+say: 'To-day is the day!' prevented me. You understand, Monsieur? And
+why not? I ought to wait no longer. Rovère's confidence had made of me a
+second Rovère who possessed the strength and force of will which the
+first one now lacked. I felt that I held in my hands, so to speak,
+Marthe's fate. I did not know her, but I looked upon her as a martyr in
+her vocation of nurse to the old paralytic to whom she was paying, in
+love, the debt of the dead wife. I said to myself: 'It is to me, to me
+alone, that Rovère must give instructions of what he wishes to leave to
+his daughter, and it is for me to urge him to do this, it is for me to
+brace his weakened will! I was resolved! It was a duty! Each day the
+unhappy man's strength failed. I saw it--this human ruin! One morning,
+when I went to his apartments, I found him in a singular state of
+terror. He related me a story, I knew not what, of a thief, whose victim
+he was; the lock of his door had been forced, his safe opened. Then,
+suddenly, interrupting himself, he began to laugh, a feeble laugh, which
+made me ill.
+
+"'I am a fool,' he said. 'I am dreaming, awake--I continue in the
+daytime the nightmares of the night--a thief here! No one has come--Mme.
+Moniche has watched--but my head is so weak, so weak! I have known so
+many rascals in my life! Rascals always return, _hein!_'
+
+"He made a sad attempt at a laugh.
+
+"It was delirium! A delirium which soon passed away, but which
+frightened me. It returned with increased force each day, and at shorter
+intervals.
+
+"Well, I said to myself, during a lucid interview, 'he must do what he
+has resolved to do, what he had willed to do--what he wishes to do!' And
+I decided--it was the night before the assassination--to bring him to
+the point, to aid his hesitation. I found him calmer that day. He was
+lying on his lounge, enveloped in his dressing gown, with a traveling
+rug thrown across his thin legs. With his black skull-cap and his
+grayish beard he looked like a dying Doge.
+
+"He held out his bony hand to me, giving me a sad smile, and said that
+he felt better. A period of remission in his disease, a feeling of
+comfort pervading his general condition.
+
+"'What if I should recover?' he said, looking me full in the face.
+
+"I comprehended by that ardent look, which was of singular vitality,
+that this man, who had never feared death, still clung to life. It was
+instinct.
+
+"I replied that certainly he might, and I even said that he would surely
+recover, but--with what grievous repugnance did I approach the
+subject--I asked him if, experiencing the general feeling of ease and
+comfort which pervaded his being, whether he would not be even more
+comfortable and happy if he thought of what he ought to do for that
+child of whom he had spoken, and for whose future he wished to provide.
+
+"'And since thou art feeling better, my dear Rovère, it is perhaps the
+opportunity to put everything in order in that life which thou art about
+to recover, and which will be a new life.'
+
+"He looked fixedly at me with his beautiful eyes. It was a profound
+regard, and I saw that he divined my thought.
+
+"'Thou art right!' he said firmly; 'no weakness.'
+
+"Then, gathering all his forces, he arose, stood upright, refusing even
+the arm which I held out to him, and in his dressing gown, which hung
+about him, he seemed to me taller, thinner, even handsomer. He took two
+or three steps, at first a little unsteady, then, straightening up, he
+walked directly to his safe, turned the letters, and opened it, after
+having smiled, and said:
+
+"'I had forgotten the word--four letters; it is, however, a little
+thing. My head is empty.'
+
+"Then, the safe opened, he took out papers--of value, without
+doubt--papers which he took back to his lounge, spread out on a table
+near at hand, and said:
+
+"'Let us see! This which I am going to give thee is for her----A will,
+yes, I could make a will----but it would create talk----it would be
+asked what I had done----it would be searched out, dug out of the past,
+it would open a tomb----I cannot!----What I have shall be hers, thou
+wilt give it to her--thou'----
+
+"And his large, haggard eyes searched through the papers.
+
+"'Ah! here!' he said; 'here are some bonds! Egyptian--of a certain value
+to the holder, at 3 per cent. I hid that--where did I put it?'
+
+"He picked up the papers, turned them over and over, became alarmed,
+turned pale.
+
+"'But,' I said to him, 'is it not among those papers?'
+
+"He shrugged his shoulders, displayed with an ironical smile the
+engraved papers.
+
+"'Some certificates of decorations! The bric-a-brac of a Consular life.'
+
+"Then with renewed energy he again went to the safe, opened the till,
+pulled it out, and searched again and again.
+
+"Overcome with fright, he exclaimed: 'It is not there!'
+
+"'Why is it not there?'
+
+"And he gave me another look--haggard! terrible! His face was fearfully
+contracted. He clasped his head with both hands, and stammered, as if
+coming out of a dream.
+
+"'It is true, I remember--I have hidden it! Yes, I hid it! I do not know
+where--in some book! In which one?'
+
+"He looked around him with wild eyes. The cerebral anæmia which had made
+him fear robbery again seized him, and poor Rovère, my old friend,
+plainly showed that he was enduring the agony of a man who is drowning,
+and who does not know where to cling in order to save himself.
+
+"He was still standing, but as he turned around, he staggered.
+
+"He repeated in a hoarse, frightened voice: 'Where, where have I hidden
+that? Fool! The safe did not seem to me secure enough! Where, where
+have I put it?'
+
+"It was then, Monsieur, yes, at that moment, that the concierge entered
+and saw us standing face to face before those papers of which she had
+spoken. I must have looked greatly embarrassed, very pale, showing the
+violent emotion which seized me by the throat. Rovère said to her rather
+roughly: 'What are you here for?' and sent her away with a gesture. Mme.
+Moniche had had time to see the open safe and the papers spread out,
+which she supposed were valuable. I understand how she deceived herself,
+and when I think of it, I accuse myself. There was something tragic
+taking place between Rovère and me. This woman could not know what it
+was, but she felt it.
+
+"And it was more terrible, a hundred times more terrible, when she had
+disappeared. There seemed to be a battle raging in Rovère's brain, as
+between his will and his weakness. Standing upright, striving not to
+give way, struggling to concentrate all his brain power in his effort to
+remember, to find some trace of the hidden place where he had foolishly
+put his fortune, between the leaves of some huge book. Rovère called
+violently, ardently to his aid his last remnant of strength to combat
+against this anæmia which took away the memory of what he had done. He
+rolled his eyes desperately, found nothing, remembered nothing.
+
+"It was awful--this combat against memory, which disappeared, fled; this
+aspect of a panting beast, a hunted boar which seemed to seize this
+man--and I shivered when, with a rage, I shall never forget, the dying
+man rushed, in two steps, to the table, bent over the papers, snatched
+them up with his thin hands, crumpled them up, tore them in two and
+threw them under his feet, with an almost maniacal laugh, saying in
+strident tones:
+
+"'Ah! Decorations! Brevets, baubles! Childish foolishness! What good are
+they? Would they give her a living?'
+
+"And he kept on laughing. He excited himself over the papers, which he
+stamped under his feet until he had completely exhausted himself. He
+gasped, 'I stifle!' and he half fell over the lounge, upon which I laid
+him. I fully believed that he was dying. I experienced a horrible
+sensation, which was agonizing. He revived, however. But how, after that
+swoon and that crisis, could I speak to him again of his daughter, of
+that which he wished to leave her, to give, in trust, to me? He became
+preoccupied with childish things, returning to the dreams of a rich man;
+he spoke of going out the next day. We would go together in the Bois. We
+would dine at the Pavilion. He would like to travel. And thus he rambled
+on.
+
+"I said to myself, 'Wait! Let us wait! To-morrow, after a good night's
+sleep, he will perhaps remember. I surely have some days before me. To
+speak to him to-day would be to provoke a new crisis.'
+
+"And I helped him to put back in the safe the crushed, torn papers,
+without his asking me, or even himself questioning how they had come
+there, who had thrown them on the floor, or who had opened the safe. His
+face wore a slight smile, his gestures were automatic. Very weary, he at
+last said:
+
+"'I am very tired. I would like to sleep.' I left him. He had stretched
+himself out and covered himself up. He closed his eyes and said:
+
+"'It is so good to sleep!'
+
+"I would see him to-morrow. I would try to again to-morrow awaken in him
+the desire which now seemed dulled. To-morrow his memory would have
+returned, and in some of his books where he had (like the Arabs who put
+their harvests in silos) placed his treasure he would find the fortune
+intended for his daughter.
+
+"To-morrow! It is the word one repeats most often, and which one has the
+least right to use.
+
+"I saw Rovère only after he was dead, with his throat cut--assassinated
+by whom? The man whom you have arrested has traveled much; he comes from
+a distance. Rovère was Consul at Buenos Ayres, and you know that he said
+to me the last day I saw him: 'I have known many rascals in my life!'
+Which seemed very simple when one thinks of the way he had lived.
+
+"This is the truth, Monsieur. I ought to have told you sooner. I repeat
+that I had the weakness of wishing to keep the vow given to my dead
+friend. I had the name of a woman to betray, the name of a man, too;
+innocent of Rovère's fault. And then, again, it seemed to me that this
+truth ought to become known of itself. When I was arrested, a sort of
+foolish bravado urged me to see how far the absurdity of the charge
+could accumulate against me seeming proofs. I am a gambler. That was a
+part I played against you, or rather against the foolishness of destiny.
+I did not take a second thought that the error could be a lasting one. I
+had, moreover, only a word to say, but this word, I repeat, I hesitated
+to speak, and I willingly supported the consequence of this hesitation,
+even because this word was a name."
+
+"That name," said M. Ginory, "I have not asked you."
+
+"I refused it to the Magistrate," said Jacques Dantin, "but I confide it
+to the man of honor!"
+
+"There is only a Magistrate here," M. Ginory replied, "but the legal
+inquiry has its secrets, as life has."
+
+And Jacques Dantin gave the name which the one whom Louis-Pièrre Rovère
+called, Marthe, bore as her rightful name.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+M. GINORY, M. Leriche, the chief; Bernardet, and, in fact, all the
+judiciary, believed that Charles Pradès was guilty of the murder of
+Rovère. Bernardet, who had been an actor in this drama, had now become a
+spectator.
+
+Paul Rodier, a good reporter, had learned before his confreres of the
+arrest of the young man, and, abandoning what he had called his trail of
+the Woman in Black, he abruptly whirled about and quickly invented a
+sensational biography of the newcomer. Charles-Henri Pradès, or rather
+Carlos Pradès, as he called himself, had been a _gaucho_, a buffalo
+tamer, a cowboy, using, turn by turn, the American revolver against the
+Redskins and the Mexican lasso against the Yankees.
+
+The journalist had obtained a signature, picked up by the lodging-house
+keeper where the guilty man had been hunted down, and published in his
+paper the autographic characters; he had deduced from them some dramatic
+observations. Cooper, of former times; Gustave Aymard, of yesterday;
+Rudyard Kipling or Bret Harte, of to-day, had never met a personage more
+dreadful, and at the same time more heroic. Carlos Pradès used the
+navaja (Spanish knife) with the terrible rapidity of a Catalan. He had
+felt since the days of Buenos Ayres a fierce hate for the ex-Consul, and
+this crime, which some of his brother reporters, habitually
+indifferently informed (it was Paul Rodier who spoke), now attributed
+alone to the avarice of this Cambrioleur from over the sea; he, Rodier,
+gave this note as the cause of vengeance, and built thereupon a romance
+which made his readers shiver. Or, rather, he said nothing outright. He
+permitted one a glimpse into, he outlined, one knows not what, dark
+history. Soon he made this Carlos Pradès the instrument and the arm of
+an association of vengeance. He could even believe that there was
+anarchy in the affair. Then he had the young man mixed in some love
+affair, a drama of passion, with Argentine Republic for the theatre.
+
+As a result he had succeeded in making interesting the man whom
+Bernardet had pushed a few nights before into the station house.
+
+And, what was a singular thing, the reporter had divined part of the
+truth. It was still another episode in his past that Rovère expiated
+when he found himself one day, in his salon in the Boulevard de Clichy,
+face to face with the man who was to be his murderer. At Buenos Ayres,
+the ex-Consul had been associated in a large agricultural enterprise
+with a man whose hazardous speculations, play and various adventures had
+completely ruined him, and who had left two children--a young girl whom
+Rovère thought for a moment of marrying, and a son, younger--poor beings
+of whom the Consul, paying his partner's debts, seemed the natural
+protector. Jean Pradès, in committing suicide--he had killed himself,
+frightened at the magnitude of his debts--had commended his children to
+Rovère's care.
+
+If Carlotta had lived, without doubt Rovère would have made her his
+wife. He loved her with a deep and respectful tenderness. The poor girl
+died very suddenly, and there remained to Rovère only his dream. One of
+those remembrances of a fireside, one of those spectres which brush the
+forehead with their wings or the folds of their winding sheets, when in
+the solitude in which he has voluntarily buried himself the searcher
+after adventures recalls the past. The past of yesterday. Illusions,
+disillusions, old loves, miseries!
+
+Rovère gave to this brother of the dead girl the affection which he had
+felt for her. He remembered, also, the father's request. Pradès's son,
+passionate, eager to live, tempted in all his appetites, accepted as his
+due Rovère's truly paternal devotion, worked on the sympathy of this
+man, who, through pity and duty, too, gave to Charles a little of the
+affection which he had felt for the sister, almost his fiancee, and for
+the father, dead by his own hand.
+
+But, little by little, the solicitations, the unreasonable demands of
+Pradès, who, believing that he had a just claim on his father's old
+partner, found it very natural that Rovère should devote himself to
+him--these continual and pressing demands became for the Consul
+irritating obsessions. Rovère seemed to this young man, who was a
+spendthrift and a gambler--a gambler possessed with atavistic frenzy--a
+sort of living savings bank, from which he could draw without counting.
+His importunities at last seemed fatiguing and excessive, and Pradès was
+advised one beautiful day that he no longer need count from that moment
+on the generosity of his benefactor. All this happened at Buenos Ayres,
+and about the time of the Consul's departure for France. Rovère added to
+this very curt declaration a last benefit. He gave to the brother of the
+dead girl, to the son of Pradès, of the firm of Rovère and Pradès, a sum
+sufficient to enable him to live while waiting for better things, and he
+told the young man in proper terms that, as he had now no one to depend
+upon, that he had better take himself elsewhere to be hung. The word
+could not be, with the appetites and habits of Charles Pradès, taken in
+a figurative sense, and the young man continued his life of adventures,
+as tragic in their reality and as improbable as the reporters'
+melodramatic inventions.
+
+Then, at the end of his resources, after having searched for fortune
+among miners, weary of tramping about in America, he embarked one
+morning for Havre, with the idea that the best gold mine was still that
+living placer which he had exploited in Buenos Ayres, and which was
+called Pièrre Rovère.
+
+At Paris, where he knew the Consul had retired, Pradès soon found trace
+of him, and learned where was the retreat of his brother-in-law. His
+brother-in-law! He pronounced the word with a wicked sneer, as if it had
+for him a something understood about the sweet and maiden remembrance of
+the dead girl. There, in gay Paris, with some resources which allowed
+him to pay for his board and lodging in a third-rate hotel, he searched,
+asked, discovered, at last, the address of the ex-Consul, and presented
+himself to Rovère, who felt, at sight of this spectre, his anger return.
+
+The first time that Charles Pradès had asked at the lodge if M. Rovère
+was at home, the Moniches had permitted him to go upstairs, and perhaps
+Mme. Moniche would have suspected the man in the sombrero if she had not
+surprised Jacques Dantin before the open safe and the papers.
+
+Pradès, moreover, had appeared only three times at Rovère's house, and
+on the day of the murder he had entered at the moment when Mme. Moniche
+was sweeping the upper floors, and Moniche was working in his shop in
+the rear of the lodge, and the staircase was empty. He rang, and
+Rovère, with dragging steps, came to open the door. Rovère was ill and
+was a little ennuied, and he believed, or instinctively hoped, that it
+was the woman in black--his daughter!
+
+Everything served Pradès's projects. He had come not to kill, but by
+some means to gain entrance to Rovère's apartments, and, when once
+there, to find some resource--a loan, more or less freely given, more or
+less forced--and he would leave with it.
+
+Rovère, already worn out, weary of his former supplications, felt
+tempted to shut the door in his face, but Pradès pushed it back,
+entered, closed it, and said:
+
+"A last interview! You will never see me again! But listen to me!"
+
+Then, Rovère allowed him to enter the salon, and despite the terrible
+weakness which he experienced wished to make this a final, decisive
+interview; to disembarrass himself once for all of this everlasting
+beggar, sometimes whining, sometimes threatening.
+
+"Will you not let me die in peace?" he said. "Have I not paid my debt?"
+
+But Pradès had seated himself in a fauteuil, crossed his legs and hung
+over his knee his sombrero, on which he drummed a minstrel march.
+
+"My dear Monsieur Rovère, it is a last appeal for funds. I believe that
+America is better than Paris. And in order to return there or to do
+what I ought here, I must have what I have not--money!"
+
+"I am tired of giving you money!" Rovère quickly replied.
+
+And between these two men, bound by the remembrance of the dead girl--a
+bond burdensome to the one, imposed upon by the other--a storm of bitter
+words and harsh sentiments arose and kindled fierce anger in both.
+
+"I tried to let you remain in peace, my dear Consul. But hunger has
+driven the wolf out of the woods. I am very hungry. And here I am!"
+
+"I have nothing with which to feed your appetites. You are nothing but a
+burden to me."
+
+"Oh! Ingratitude!" and Pradès, with his Argentine accent, spoke his
+sister's name.
+
+"My father died and Carlotta herself entrusted me to your care, my dear
+brother-in-law!"
+
+It seemed to the sick man, irritated as he was, that this name--which he
+had buried deep in his heart with chaste tenderness--was a supreme
+insult.
+
+"I forbid you to evoke that memory! You do not see, then, that the
+memory of that dear and saintly creature is one of the griefs of my
+life!"
+
+"And it is one of my heritages! Brother-in-law of a consul, _Senor mia_,
+but it is a title, and I hold it!"
+
+Rovère experienced a strong desire to call, to ring, to give an order to
+have this troublesome visitor put out. But energetic and fearless as he
+had been but a short time before, now weakened by illness, he trembled
+before a possible scandal. Then he, unaided, attempted to push the young
+man out of the salon. Pradès resisted, and, at the first touch, gave a
+bound, and all that was evil in him suddenly awoke.
+
+A struggle ensued, without a word being pronounced by either; a quick,
+brutal struggle. Rovère counted on his past strength, taking by the
+collar this Pradès who threatened him, and Pradès, while clutching the
+ex-Consul with his left hand, searched in his pocket for a weapon--the
+one which Bernardet had taken from him.
+
+This was a sinister moment! Pradès pushed Rovère back; he staggered and
+fell against a piece of furniture, while the young man disengaging
+himself, stepped back, quickly opened his Spanish knife, then, with a
+bound, caught Rovère, shook him, and holding the knife uplifted, said:
+
+"Thou hast willed it!"
+
+It was at this instant that Rovère, whose hands were contracted, dug his
+nails into the assassin's neck--the nails which the Commissary Desbrière
+and M. Jacquelin Audrays had found still red with blood.
+
+Pradès, who had come there either to supplicate or threaten, now had
+only one thought, hideous and ferocious--to kill! He did not reason. It
+was no more than an unchained instinct. The noise of the organs upon the
+Boulevard, which accompanied with their musical, dragging notes this
+savage scene, like a tremulo undertone to a melodrama at the theatre, he
+did not hear. The whole intensity of his life seemed to be concentrated
+in his fury, in his hand armed with the knife. He threw himself on
+Rovère; he struck the flesh, opening the throat, as across the water
+among the Gauchos he had been accustomed to kill sheep or cut the throat
+of an ox.
+
+Rovère staggered, wavered, freed from the hand which held him, and
+Pradès stepping back, looked at him.
+
+Livid, the dying man seemed to live only in his eyes. He had cast upon
+the murderer a last meaning look--now, in a sort of supreme agony, he
+looked around, his eyes searched for a support, for aid, yes, they
+called, while from that throat horrible sounds issued.
+
+Pradès saw with a kind of fright, Rovère, with a superhuman tragic
+effort, step back, staggering like a drunken man, pull with his poor
+contracted hands from above the chimney piece an object which the
+murderer had not noticed and upon which, with an ardent, prayerful
+expression he fixed his eyes, stammering some quick inarticulate words
+which Pradès could not hear or understand.
+
+It seemed to Pradès that between his victim and himself there was a
+witness, and whether he thought of the value of the stones imbedded in
+the frame or whether he wished to take from Rovère this last support in
+his distress, he went to him and attempted to tear the portrait from his
+hands. But an extraordinary strength seemed to come to the dying man and
+Rovère resisted, fastening his eyes upon the portrait, casting upon it a
+living flame, like the last flare of a dying lamp, and with this last,
+despairing, agonizing look the ex-Consul breathed his last. He fell.
+Pradès tore the portrait from the fingers which clutched it. That frame,
+he could sell it. He picked up here and there some pieces which seemed
+to him of value, as if on a pillaging tour on the prairies. He was about
+to enter the library where the safe was, when the noise of the opening
+of the entrance door awakened his trapper's instinct. Some one was
+coming. Who it could be was of little importance. To remain was to
+expose himself, to be at once arrested. The corpse once seen, the person
+would cry aloud, rush out, close the door and send for the police.
+
+Hesitating between a desire to pillage and the necessity for fright,
+Pradès did not wait long to decide. Should he hide? Impossible! Then,
+stepping back to the salon door, he flattened himself as much as
+possible against the wall and waited until the door should be opened
+when he would be completely hidden behind it. As Mme. Moniche stepped
+into the room and cried out as she saw Rovère lying on the floor, Pradès
+slipped into the ante-chamber, found himself on the landing, closed the
+door, rapidly descended the stairs and stepped out upon the Boulevard de
+Clichy among the passers-by, even before Mme. Moniche, terrified, had
+called for help.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+ALL the details of that murder, M. Ginory had drawn, one by one, from
+Pradès in his examination. The murderer denied at first; hesitated;
+discussed; then at last, like a cask with the bung out, from which pours
+not wine, but blood, the prisoner told all; confessed; recounted;
+loosened his tongue; abandoned himself weakened and conquered, weary of
+his misery.
+
+"I was so foolish, so stupid," he violently said, "as to keep the
+portrait. I believed that the frame was worth a fortune. Fool! I sold it
+for a hundred sous!"
+
+He gave the merchant's address, it was on the Quai Saint Michel.
+Bernardet found the frame as he had found the painted panel, and this
+time, no great credit was due him.
+
+"Now," said he, "the affair is ended, _classé_. My children (he was
+relating his adventures to his little girls), we must pass to another.
+And why"--
+
+"Why, what?" asked Mme. Bernardet.
+
+"Eh! there it is! Why--it lacks the elucidation of a problem. I will
+see! I will know!"
+
+He still remembered the young Danish doctor, whom he had seen with M.
+Morin at the autopsy. With his knowledge of men, with the sharp, keen
+eye of the police officer, Bernardet had recognized a man of superior
+mind; a mind dreamy and mysterious. He knew where Dr. Erwin lived during
+his sojourn in Paris, and he went to his apartment one beautiful morning
+and rang the bell at the door of a hotel in the Boulevard Saint Martin,
+where students and strangers lodge. He might have asked advice of M.
+Morin, of the master of French Science, but he, the Inspector of Sureté,
+approach these high personages, to question them. He dared not as long
+as there was a Danish doctor.
+
+Bernardet's brain whirled. He felt almost certain that Dr. Erwin would
+give the same explanation which he, himself, suspected, in regard to the
+observed phenomenon.
+
+"The dead man's eye has spoken and can speak," said Bernardet to
+himself. "Yes, surely. I am not deceived."
+
+Dr. Erwin met Bernardet cordially and listened to him with profound
+attention. The police officer repeated word for word the confession
+drawn from Pradès. Then he asked the Danish physician if he really
+believed that Jacques Dantin's image had been transfixed on the retina
+of the dying man's eye, during the time when he had held and gazed at
+the portrait.
+
+"For the proofs which I obtained were very confused," said the officer,
+"it is possible, and I say it is quite easy to recognize Jacques
+Dantin's features. We have seen it, and, according to your opinion even
+the painting was able to be--how shall I express myself--stored up,
+retained in the retina."
+
+"You found the proof there," said Dr. Erwin.
+
+"So, according to your opinion, I have not deceived myself?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"I have truly found in the retina of the dead man's eye the last vision
+he saw when living?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"But the vision of a painting. A painting, Doctor."
+
+"Why not!" Dr. Erwin responded in a sharp tone. "Do you know what
+happened? Knowing that he was dying the unhappy man went, urged by a
+tragic impulse, to that portrait which represented to him all that was
+left, concentrating in one image alone, all his life."
+
+"Then it is possible? It is possible?" Bernardet repeated.
+
+"I believe it," said the Dane. "The man is dying. He has only one
+thought--to go directly to the one who, surviving him, guarded his
+secrets and his life. He seized his portrait; he tore it from its hook
+with all his strength; he devoured it with his eyes; he drank it in with
+a look, if I may be allowed the expression. To this picture of the being
+whom he loved he spoke; he cried to him; telling him his last wishes;
+dictating to him his thoughts of vengeance. At this supreme moment his
+energy was increased a hundredfold, I know not what intensity of life
+was concentrated on this image, and gathering all his failing forces in
+a last look the man who wished to live; the man weakened by illness,
+dying, assassinated, put into that last regard the electric force, the
+fire which fixed the image (confused, no doubt, but recognizable since
+you have traced the resemblance) upon the retina. A phantom, if you
+wish, which is reflected in the dead man's eye."
+
+"And," repeated Bernardet, who wished to be perfectly assured in regard
+to the question, "it is not only the image of a living being, it is, to
+use your words, the phantom even of a painting which was retained on the
+retina?"
+
+"I do not reply to you: 'That is possible!' It is you who say to me: 'I
+have seen it!' And you have seen it, in truth, and the form, vague
+though it may be, the painted figure permits you to find in a passer-by
+the man whose picture the retina had already shown you!"
+
+"Oh! well! Doctor," said the little Bernardet, "I shall tell that, but
+they will deny it. They will say that it is impossible!"
+
+Dr. Erwin smiled. He seemed to be looking, with his deep blue eyes, at
+some invisible perspective, not bounded by the rooms of little room.
+
+"One has said," he began, "that the word _impossible_ is not French. It
+would be more exact to affirm that it was not _human_! We attain a
+knowledge of the unknowable. The mysterious is approachable. One must
+deny nothing _a priori_; one must believe all things possible and not
+only a dream. Search for the truth, the _harsh_ truth, as your Stendhal
+said. Well! the word is wrong. One ought to say justly, the _exquisite_
+truth, for it is a joy for those who search, that daily life where each
+movement marks a step advanced, where the heart beats at the thought of
+a rendezvous in the laboratory as at a rendezvous of love. Ah! he is
+happy who has given his life to science. He lives in a dream. It is the
+poetry, in our times of prose. The dream," continued the young doctor as
+in an ecstasy, while Bernardet listened, ravished, "the dream is
+everywhere. It is impossible to make it tangible. Thought, human
+thought, can sometime be deciphered like an open book. An American
+physician asked to be permitted to try an experiment upon the cranium of
+a condemned man, still living. Through the cranium he studied the man's
+brain. Has not Edison undertaken to give sight to the blind! But, in
+order to accomplish all these things, it is necessary, as in primitive
+times, to believe, to believe always. The twentieth century will see
+many others."
+
+"Ah! Doctor! Doctor!" cried poor little Bernardet, much moved. "I do not
+wish to be the ignoramus that I am, the father of a family, who has
+mouths to feed, and I beg of you to take me as a sweeper in your
+laboratory."
+
+He departed, enthused by the interview. Henceforth he could say that,
+he, the ignorant one, had, by his seemingly foolish conviction, proved
+the leader of an experiment which had been abandoned for some years; and
+the humble police officer had reopened the nearly closed door to
+criminal instruction.
+
+A scruple, moreover, came to him; a doubt, an agony, and he wished to
+share it with M. Ginory.
+
+All the same, with the admirable invention, he had caused an innocent
+man to be arrested. This thought made him very uneasy. He had produced a
+power which, instead of striking the guilty, had overthrown an unhappy
+man, and it was this famous discovery of Dr. Bourion's, persisted in by
+him, which had resulted in this mistake.
+
+"It must be," he thought, "that man may be fallible even in the most
+marvelous discoveries. It is frightful! It is perhaps done to make us
+more prudent. Prudent and modest!"
+
+Doubt now seized him. Must he stop there in these famous experiments
+which ended in this lie? Ought he abandon all research on a road which
+ended in a cul-de-sac? And he confided that unhappy scruple to the
+Examining Magistrate, with whom the chances of the service had put him
+in sympathy. M. Ginory not only was interested in strange discoveries,
+but he was always indulgent toward the original, little Bernardet.
+
+"Finally, M. le Juge," said the police officer, shaking his head, "I
+have thought and thought about the discovery, our discovery--that of Dr.
+Bourion. It is subject to errors, our discovery. It would have led us to
+put in prison--Jacques Dantin, and Jacques Dantin was not guilty."
+
+"Oh, yes! M. Bernardet," said the Magistrate, who seemed thoughtful, his
+heavy chin resting on his hand. "It ought to make us modest. It is the
+fate of all human discoveries. To err--to err, is human!"
+
+"It is not the less true," responded Bernardet, "that all which has
+passed opens to us the astonishing horizon of the unknown"----
+
+"The unknowable!" murmured the Magistrate.
+
+"A physician who sometimes asks me to his experiments invited me to his
+house the other evening and I saw--yes saw, or what one calls seeing, in
+a mirror placed before me, by the light of the X-rays--greenish rays
+which traversed the body--yes, Monsieur, I saw my heart beat, and my
+lungs perform their functions, and I am fat, and a thin person could
+better see himself living and breathing. Is it not fantastic, Monsieur
+Ginory? Would not a man have been shut up as a lunatic thirty years ago
+who would have pretended that he had discovered that? We shall see--we
+shall see many others!"
+
+"And will it add to the happiness of man? and will it diminish grief,
+wickedness and crime?"
+
+The Magistrate spoke as if to himself, thoughtfully, sadly. Something
+Bernardet said brought a smile to his lips.
+
+"This is, Monsieur le Juge, a fine ending of the chapter for the second
+part of your work, 'The Duty of a Magistrate Toward Scientific
+Discoveries.' And if the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences does
+not add"----
+
+M. Ginory suddenly turned red and interrupted Bernardet with a word and
+a gesture.
+
+"Monsieur Bernardet!"
+
+"I can only repeat, Monsieur, what public opinion thinks and says," said
+Bernardet, bowing low. "There was an illusion to this affair written up.
+An amiable fellow--that Paul Rodier."
+
+"Ah! Monsieur Bernardet, Monsieur Bernardet!" laughingly said the
+Magistrate, "you have a weakness for reporters. Do you want me to tell
+you something? You will finish by becoming a journalist."
+
+"And you will certainly finish in the habit of a member of the Academy,
+Monsieur Ginory," said the little Bernardet, with his air of a mocking
+abbé.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+VERY often, after his release from prison, Jacques Dantin went to the
+corner of the cemetery at Montmartre, where his friend lay. And he
+always carried flowers. It had become to him, since the terrible strain
+of his detention, a necessity, a habit. The dead are living! They wait,
+they understand, they listen!
+
+It seemed to Dantin that he had but one aim. Alas! What had been the
+wish, the last dream of the dead man would never be realized. That
+fortune which Rovère had intended for the child whom he had no right to
+call his own would go, was going to some far-off cousins of whose
+existence the ex-Consul was not even aware perhaps, and whom he
+certainly had never known--to some indifferent persons, chance
+relatives, strangers.
+
+"I ought not to have waited for him to tell me what his intentions were
+regarding his daughter," Dantin often thought. What would become of her,
+the poor girl, who knew the secret of her birth and who remained silent,
+piously devoting herself to the old soldier whose name she bore?
+
+One day in February a sad, gray day, Jacques Dantin, thinking of the
+past Winter so unhappy of the sad secret grave and heavy, strolled
+along toward that granite tomb near which Rovère slept. He recalled the
+curious crowd which had accompanied his dead friend to its last resting
+place: the flowers; the under current of excitement; the cortège.
+Silence now filled the place! Dark shadows could be seen here and there
+between the tombs at the end of paths. It was not a visiting day nor an
+hour usual for funerals. This solitude pleased Jacques. He felt near to
+him whom he loved.
+
+Louis-Pièrre Rovère. That name, which Moniche had had engraved, evoked
+many remembrances for this man who had for a time been suspected of
+assassinating him. All his childhood, all his youth, all the past! How
+quickly the years had fled, such ruined years. So much of fever, of
+agitation--so many ambitions, deceptions, in order to end here.
+
+"He is at rest at least," thought Dantin, remembering his own life,
+without aim, without happiness. And he also would rest soon, having not
+even a friend in this great city of Paris whom he could depend upon to
+pay him a last visit. A ruined, wicked, useless life!
+
+He again bade Rovère good-bye speaking to him, calling him thee and thou
+as of old. Then he went slowly away. But at the end of a walk he turned
+around to look once more at the place where his friend lay. He saw,
+coming that way, between the tombs, as if by some cross alley, a woman
+in black, who was walking directly toward the place he had left. He
+stopped, waiting--yes, it was to Rovère's tomb that she was going. Tall,
+svelte, and as far as Jacques Dantin could see, she was young. He said
+to himself:
+
+"It is his daughter!"
+
+The memory of their last interview came to him. He saw his unhappy
+friend, haggard, standing in front of his open safe, searching through
+his papers for those which represented his child's fortune. If this was
+his friend's daughter, it was to him that Rovère had looked to assure
+her future.
+
+He walked slowly back to the tomb. The woman in black was now kneeling
+near the gray stone. Bent over, arranging a bouquet of chrysanthemums
+which she had brought. Dantin could see only her kneeling form and black
+draperies.
+
+She was praying now!
+
+Dantin stood looking at her, and when at last she arose he saw that she
+was tall and elegant in her mourning robes. He advanced toward her. The
+noise of his footsteps on the gravel caused her to turn her head, and
+Dantin saw a beautiful face, young and sad. She had blonde hair and
+large eyes, which opened wide in surprise. He saw the same expression of
+the eyes which Rovère's had borne.
+
+The young woman instinctively made a movement as if to go away, to give
+place to the newcomer. But Dantin stopped her with a gesture.
+
+"Do not go away, Mademoiselle. I am the best friend of the one who
+sleeps here."
+
+She stopped, pale and timid.
+
+"I know very well that you loved him," he added.
+
+She unconsciously let a frightened cry escape her and looked helplessly
+around.
+
+"He told me all," Dantin slowly said. "I am Jacques Dantin. He has
+spoken to you of me, I think"----
+
+"Yes," the young woman answered.
+
+Dantin involuntarily shivered. Her voice had the same _timbre_ as
+Rovère's.
+
+In the silence of the cemetery, near the tomb, before that name,
+Louis-Pièrre Rovère, which seemed almost like the presence of his dead
+friend, Dantin felt the temptation to reveal to this girl what her
+father had wished her to know.
+
+They knew each other without ever having met. One word was enough, one
+name was sufficient, in order that the secret which united them should
+bring them nearer each other. What Dantin was to Rovère, Rovère had told
+Marthe again and again.
+
+Then, as if from the depths of the tomb, Rovère had ordered him to
+speak. Jacques Dantin, in the solemn silence of that City of the Dead,
+confided to the young girl what her father had tried to tell him. He
+spoke rapidly, the words, "A legacy--in trust--a fortune" fell from his
+lips. But the young girl quickly interrupted him with a grand gesture.
+
+"I do not wish to know what any one has told you of me. I am the
+daughter of a man who awaits me at Blois, who is old, who loves only me,
+who needs only me, and I need nothing!"
+
+There was in her tone an accent of command, of resolution, which Dantin
+recognized as one of Rovère's most remarkable characteristics.
+
+Had Dantin known nothing, this sound in the voice, this ardent look on
+the pale face, would have given him a hint or a suspicion, and have
+obliged him to think of Rovère. Rovère lived again in this woman in
+black whom Jacques Dantin saw for the first time.
+
+"Then?" asked this friend of the dead man, as if awaiting an order.
+
+"Then," said the young girl in her deep voice, "when you meet me near
+this tomb do not speak to me of anything. If you should meet me outside
+this cemetery, do not recognize me. The secret which was confided to you
+by the one who sleeps there, is the secret of a dead one whom I
+adored--_my mother_; and of a living person whom I reverence--_my
+father!_"
+
+She accented the words with a sort of tender, passionate piety, and
+Jacques Dantin saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
+
+"Now, adieu!" she said.
+
+Jacques still wished to speak of that last confidence of the dying man,
+but she said again:
+
+"Adieu!"
+
+With her hand, gloved in black, she made the sign of the Cross, smiled
+sadly as she looked at the tomb where the chrysanthemums lay, then
+lowering her veil she went away, and Dantin, standing near the gray
+tomb, saw her disappear at the end of an alley.
+
+The martyr, expiating near the old crippled man, a fault of which she
+was innocent, went back to him who was without suspicion; to him who
+adored her and to whom she was, in their poor apartment in Blois, his
+saint and his daughter.
+
+She would watch, she would lose her youth, near that old soldier whose
+robust constitution would endure many, many long years. She would pay
+her dead mother's debt; she would pay it by devoting every hour of her
+life to this man whose name she bore--an illustrious name, a name
+belonging to the victories, to the struggles, to the history of
+yesterday--she would be the hostage, the expiatory victim.
+
+With all her life would she redeem the fault of that other!
+
+"And who knows, my poor Rovère," said Jacques Dantin, "thy daughter,
+proud of her sacrifice, is perhaps happier in doing this!"
+
+In his turn he left the tomb, he went out of the cemetery, he wished to
+walk to his lodging in the Rue Richelieu. He had only taken a few steps
+along the Boulevard, where--it seemed but yesterday--he had followed
+(talking with Bernardet) behind Rovère's funeral carriage, when he
+nearly ran into a little man who was hurrying along the pavement. The
+police officer saluted him, with a shaking of the head, which had in it
+regret, a little confusion, some excuses.
+
+"Ah! Monsieur Dantin, what a grudge you must have against me!"
+
+"Not at all," said Dantin. "You thought that you were doing your duty,
+and it did not displease me to have you try to so quickly avenge my poor
+Rovère."
+
+"Avenge him! Yes, he will be! I would not give four sous for Charles
+Pradès's head to-morrow, when he is tried. We shall see each other in
+court. _Au revoir_, Monsieur Dantin, and all my excuses!"
+
+"_Au revoir_, Monsieur Bernardet, and all my compliments!"
+
+The two men separated. Bernardet was on his way home to breakfast. He
+was late. Mme. Bernardet would be waiting, and a little red and
+breathless he hurried along. He stopped on hearing a newsboy announce
+the last number of _Lutèce_.
+
+"Ask for the account of the trial to-morrow: The inquest by Paul Rodier
+on the crime of the Boulevard de Clichy!"
+
+The newsboy saluted Bernardet whom he knew very well.
+
+"Give me a paper!" said the police officer. The boy pulled out a paper
+from the package he was carrying, and waved it over his head like a
+flag.
+
+"Ah! I understand, that interests you, Monsieur Bernardet!"
+
+And while the little man looked for the heading _Lutèce_ in capital
+letters--the title which Paul Rodier had given to a series of interviews
+with celebrated physicians, the newsboy, giving Bernardet his change,
+said:
+
+"To-morrow is the trial. But there is no doubt, is there, Monsieur
+Bernardet? Pradès is condemned in advance!"
+
+"He has confessed, it is an accomplished fact," Bernardet replied,
+pocketing his change.
+
+"_Au revoir_ and thanks, Monsieur Bernardet."
+
+And the newsboy, going on his way, cried out:
+
+"Ask for _Lutèce_--The Rovère trial! The affair to-morrow! Paul Rodier's
+inquest on the eye of the dead man!" His voice was at last drowned in
+the noise of tramways and cabs.
+
+M. Bernardet hurried on. The little ones would have become impatient,
+yes, yes, waiting for him, and asking for him around the table at home.
+He looked at the paper which he had bought. Paul Rodier, in regard to
+the question which he, Bernardet, had raised, had interviewed savants
+physiologists, psychologists, and in good journalistic style had
+published, the evening before the trial, the result of his inquest.
+
+M. Bernardet read as he hastened along the long titles in capitals in
+large head lines.
+
+"A Scientific Problem Àpropos of the Rovère Affair!"
+
+"Questions of Medical Jurisprudence!"
+
+"The Eye of the Dead Man!"
+
+"Interviews and Opinions of MM. Les Docteurs Brouardel, Roux, Duclaux,
+Pean, Robin, Pozzi, Blum, Widal, Gilles de la Tourette"----
+
+Bernardet turned the leaves. The interviews filled two pages at least in
+solid columns.
+
+"So much the better! So much the better!" said the police officer
+enchanted. And hastening along even faster, he said to himself:
+
+"I am going to read all that to the children; yes, all that--it will
+amuse them--life is a romance like any other! More incredible than any
+other! And these questions; the unknown, the invisible, all these
+problems--how interesting they are! And the mystery--so amusing!"
+
+JULES CLARETIE of the French Academy; Mrs. Carlton A. Kingsbury,
+Translator.
+
+
+
+
+                          Transcriber's Notes:
+
+For reasons unknown, the chapter headings show no Chapter XII and no
+Chapter XV. The chapter headings were left unchanged. I am told that
+both a copy of the physical book and the copy at The Interne Archive
+have the same Chapter numbering sequence.
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Small caps have been replaced with ALL CAPS text.
+
+On page 15, a quotation mark was placed before "But since you".
+
+On page 15, a quotation mark was placed before "But I am nothing".
+
+On page 35, "in so unforseen" was replaced with "in so unforeseen".
+
+On page 38, "the wordly magistrate" was replaced with "the worldly
+magistrate".
+
+On page 40, the quotation mark after "which he wished to" was removed.
+
+On page 40, "the study of M. Rovèro" was replaced with "the study of M.
+Rovère".
+
+On page 42, "to be exact, thirty-six" was replaced with "to be exact,
+twenty-six years".
+
+On page 43, "14th of June, 1848" was replaced with "14th of June, 1868".
+
+On page 46, "devination" was replaced with "divination".
+
+On page 49, "reëntered the salon" was replaced with "reentered the
+salon".
+
+On page 50, "des Aubrays" was replaced with "des Audrays".
+
+On page 61, "tatooings" was replaced with "tattooings".
+
+On page 64, a single quotation mark before "Art thou satisfied" was
+replaced with a double quotation mark.
+
+On page 82, "acqueous" was replaced with "aqueous".
+
+On page 85, "sixteerth" was replaced with "sixteenth".
+
+On page 91, "Mme. Monchie" was replaced with "Mme. Moniche".
+
+On page 99, "chosen by Mr. Rovère" was replaced with "chosen by M.
+Rovère".
+
+On page 101, "mein" was replaced with "mien".
+
+On page 110, the [oe] ligature was replaced with "oe".
+
+On page 111, the period after "he replied" was replaced with a comma.
+
+On page 111, a paragraph marker was placed after "Why?".
+
+On page 121, the quotation mark was removed after "Rovère's murder?".
+
+On page 122, a period was placed after "of your biography".
+
+On page 129, the quotation mark was removed after "of death."
+
+On page 140, "Rovêre's" was replaced with "Rovère's".
+
+On page 146, "charcteristic" was replaced with "characteristic".
+
+On page 150, "portait which resembled" was replaced with "portrait which
+resembled".
+
+On page 153, "Bernadet left enchanted" was replaced with "Bernardet left
+enchanted".
+
+On page 164, "retain silent" was replaced with "remain silent".
+
+On page 171, "grey" was replaced with "gray".
+
+On page 184, the [oe] ligature was replaced with "oe".
+
+On page 224, "had came there" was replaced with "had come there".
+
+On page 230, "one mornnig" was replaced with "one morning".
+
+On page 230, "Prades, moreover" was replaced with "Pradès, moreover".
+
+On page 232, "my dear brother-in law" was replaced with "my dear
+brother-in-law".
+
+On page 235, "necessity for fright" was replaced with "necessity for
+flight."
+
+On page 241, "in the labratory" was replaced with "in the laboratory".
+
+On page 250, "chysanthemums" was replaced with "chrysanthemums".
+
+On page 251, "hurring" was replaced with "hurrying".
+
+On page 251, "Prades's" was replaced with "Pradès's".
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Crime of the Boulevard, by Jules Claretie
+
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Crime of the Boulevard, by Jules Claretie
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+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
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+Title: The Crime of the Boulevard
+
+Author: Jules Claretie
+
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+
+Release Date: October 11, 2010 [EBook #34058]
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+
+
+<h1><i>The Crime of<br />
+The Boulevard</i></h1>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 30px;">
+<img src="images/decloration.jpg" width="30" height="30" alt="decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<h3>By JULES CLARETIE</h3>
+
+<p class="center">Member of the French Academy</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 30px;">
+<img src="images/decloration.jpg" width="30" height="30" alt="decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">Translated by
+MRS. CARLTON A. KINGSBURY</p>
+
+<div class="figcenter" style="width: 30px;">
+<img src="images/decloration.jpg" width="30" height="30" alt="decoration" title="" />
+</div>
+
+<p class="center">R. F. FENNO &amp; COMPANY</p>
+
+<p class="center">Eighteen East Seventeenth Street:: NEW YORK</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p class="center">Copyright, 1897</p>
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">by</span></p>
+
+<p class="center">R. F. FENNO &amp; COMPANY</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<h1>The Crime of the Boulevard</h1>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;3]</span></p>
+
+<h2>THE
+CRIME OF THE BOULEVARD.</h2>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER I.</h3>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">Where</span> does Bernardet live?"</p>
+
+<p>"At the passage to the right&mdash;Yes, that house
+which you see with the grating and the garden behind
+it."</p>
+
+<p>The man to whom a passer-by had given this information
+hurried away in the direction pointed
+out; although gasping for breath, he tried to run,
+in order to more quickly reach the little house at
+the end of the passage of the Elysée des Beaux
+Arts. This passage, a sort of cul-de-sac, on either
+side of which were black buildings, strange old
+houses, and dilapidated storehouses, opened upon
+a boulevard filled with life and movement; with
+people promenading; with the noise of tramways;
+with gaiety and light.</p>
+
+<p>The man wore the dress and had the bearing of
+a workman. He was very short, very fat, and his
+bald head was bared to the warm October rain.
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;4]</span>
+He was a workman, in truth, who labored in his
+concierge lodge, making over and mending garments
+for his neighbors, while his wife looked after
+the house, swept the staircases, and complained of
+her lot.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Moniche found life hard and disagreeable,
+and regretted that it had not given her what it
+promised when, at eighteen, and very pretty, she
+had expected something better than to watch beside
+a tailor bent over his work in a concierge's
+lodge. Into her life a tragedy had suddenly precipitated
+itself, and Mme. Moniche found, that day,
+something to brighten up her afternoon. Entering
+a moment before, the apartment occupied by M.
+Rovère, she had found her lodger lying on his
+back, his eyes fixed, his arms flung out, with a
+gash across his throat!</p>
+
+<p>M. Rovère had lived alone in the house for many
+years, receiving a few mysterious persons. Mme.
+Moniche looked after his apartment, entering by
+using her own key whenever it was necessary; and
+her lodger had given her permission to come there
+at any time to read the daily papers.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Moniche hurried down the stairs.</p>
+
+<p>"M. Rovère is dead! M. Rovère has been murdered!
+His throat has been cut! He has been
+assassinated!" And, pushing her husband out of
+the door, she exclaimed:</p>
+
+<p>"The police! Go for the police!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;5]</span>
+This word "police" awakened in the tailor's
+mind, not the thought of the neighboring Commissary,
+but the thought of the man to whom he felt
+that he ought to appeal, whom he ought to consult.
+This man was the good little M. Bernardet, who
+passed for a man of genius of his kind, at the
+Sureté, and for whom Moniche had often repaired
+coats and rehemmed trousers.</p>
+
+<p>From the mansion in the Boulevard de Clichy,
+where Moniche lived, to M. Bernardet's house, was
+but a short distance, and the concierge knew the
+way very well, as he had often been there. But
+the poor man was so stupefied, so overwhelmed, by
+the sudden appearance of his wife in his room, by
+the brutal revelation which came to him as the
+blow of a fist, by the horrible manner of M. Rovère's
+death, that he lost his head. Horrified,
+breathless, he asked the first passer-by where Bernardet
+lived, and he ran as fast as he could in the
+direction pointed out.</p>
+
+<p>Arrived at the grating, the worthy man, a little
+confused, stopped short. He was very strongly
+moved. It seemed to him that he had been cast
+into the agony of a horrible nightmare. An assassination
+in the house! A murder in the Boulevard
+de Clichy in broad daylight, just over his head,
+while he was quietly repairing a vest!</p>
+
+<p>He stood looking at the house without ringing.
+M. Bernardet was, no doubt, breakfasting with his
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;6]</span>
+family, for it was Sunday, and the police officer,
+meeting Moniche the evening before, had said to
+him: "To-morrow is my birthday."</p>
+
+<p>Moniche hesitated a moment, then he rang the
+bell. He was not kept waiting; the sudden opening
+of the grating startled him; he pushed back
+the door and entered. He crossed a little court, at
+the end of which was a pavilion; he mounted the
+three steps and was met on the threshold by a little
+woman, as rosy and fresh as an apple, who, napkin
+in hand, gayly saluted him.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh, Monsieur Moniche!"</p>
+
+<p>It was Mme. Bernardet, a Burgundian woman,
+about thirty-five years of age, trim and coquettish,
+who stepped back so that the tailor could enter.</p>
+
+<p>"What is the matter, M. Moniche?"</p>
+
+<p>Poor Moniche rolled his frightened eyes around
+and gasped out: "I must speak to M. Bernardet."</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing easier," said the little woman. "M.
+Bernardet is in the garden. Yes, he is taking advantage
+of the beautiful day; he is taking a
+group"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"What group?"</p>
+
+<p>"You know very well, photography is his passion.
+Come with me."</p>
+
+<p>And Mme. Bernardet pointed to the end of the
+corridor, where an open door gave a glimpse of the
+garden at the rear of the house. M. Bernardet,
+the Inspector, had posed his three daughters with
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;7]</span>
+their mother about a small table, on which coffee
+had been served.</p>
+
+<p>"I had just gone in to get my napkin, when I
+heard you ring," Mme. Bernardet said.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet made a sign to Moniche not to advance.
+He was as plump and as gay as his wife.
+His moustache was red, his double chin smooth-shaven
+and rosy, his eyes had a sharp, cunning
+look, his head was round and closely cropped.</p>
+
+<p>The three daughters, clothed alike in Scotch
+plaid, were posing in front of a photographic apparatus
+which stood on a tripod. The eldest was
+about twelve years of age; the youngest a child of
+five. They were all three strangely alike.</p>
+
+<p>M. Bernardet, in honor of his birthday, was taking
+a picture of his daughters. The ferret who,
+from morning till night, tracked robbers and malefactors
+into their hiding places, was taking his recreation
+in his damp garden. The sweet idyl of
+this hidden life repaid him for his unceasing investigations,
+for his trouble and fatiguing man-hunts
+through Paris.</p>
+
+<p>"There!" he said, clapping the cap over the
+lens. "That is all! Go and play now, my dears.
+I am at your service, Moniche."</p>
+
+<p>He shut up his photographic apparatus, pulling
+out the tripod from the deep soil in which it was
+imbedded, while his daughters joyously ran to their
+mother. The young girls stood gazing at Moniche
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;8]</span>
+with their great blue eyes, piercing and clear.
+Bernardet turned to look at him, and at once
+divined that something had happened.</p>
+
+<p>"You are as white as your handkerchief,
+Moniche," he said.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Monsieur Bernardet! It is enough to terrify
+one! There has been a murder in the house."</p>
+
+<p>"A murder?"</p>
+
+<p>His face, which had been so gay and careless,
+suddenly took on a strange expression, at once
+tense and serious; the large blue eyes shone as
+with an inward fire.</p>
+
+<p>"A murder, yes, Monsieur Bernardet. M. Rovère&mdash;you
+did not know him?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"He was an original&mdash;a recluse. And now he
+has been assassinated. My wife went to his room
+to read the papers"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet interrupted him brusquely:</p>
+
+<p>"When did it happen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! <i>Dame!</i> Monsieur, I do not know. All I
+know is my wife found the body still warm. She
+was not afraid; she touched it."</p>
+
+<p>"Still warm!"</p>
+
+<p>These words struck Bernardet. He reflected a
+moment, then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Come; let us go to your house."</p>
+
+<p>Then, struck with a sudden idea, he added:
+"Yes, I will take it."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;9]</span>
+He unfastened his camera from the tripod. "I
+have three plates left which I can use," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Bernardet, who was standing at a little
+distance, with the children clinging to her skirts,
+perceived that the concierge had brought important
+news. Bernardet's smiling face had suddenly
+changed; the expression became serious, his glance
+fixed and keen.</p>
+
+<p>"Art thou going with him?" Mme. Bernardet
+asked, as she saw her husband buckle on a leather
+bandolier.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!" he answered.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Mon Dieu! my poor Sunday, and this
+evening&mdash;can we not go to the little theatre at
+Montmartre this evening?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know," he replied.</p>
+
+<p>"You promised! The poor children! You
+promised to take them to see Closerie des Genets!"</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot tell; I do not know&mdash;I will see," the
+little man said. "My dear Moniche, to-day is my
+fortieth birthday. I promised to take them to the
+theatre&mdash;but I must go with you." Turning to his
+wife, he added: "But I will come back as soon as
+I can. Come, Moniche, let us hasten to your M.
+Rovère."</p>
+
+<p>He kissed his wife on the forehead, and each little
+girl on both cheeks, and, strapping the camera in the
+bandolier, he went out, followed by the tailor. As
+they walked quickly along Moniche kept repeating:
+"Still warm; yes, Monsieur Bernardet, still warm!"</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;10]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER II.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Bernardet</span> was quite an original character.
+Among the agents, some of whom were very odd,
+and among the devoted subalterns, this little man,
+with his singular mind, with his insatiable curiosity,
+reading anything he could lay his hands on,
+passed for a literary person. His chief sometimes
+laughingly said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Bernardet, take care! You have literary
+ambitions. You will begin to dream of writing
+for the papers."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, no, Monsieur Morel&mdash;but what would you?&mdash;I
+am simply amusing myself."</p>
+
+<p>This was true. Bernardet was a born hunter.
+With a superior education, he might have become a
+savant, a frequenter of libraries, passing his life in
+working on documents and in deciphering manuscripts.
+The son of a dairyman; brought up in a
+Lancastrian school; reading with avidity all the
+daily papers; attracted by everything mysterious
+which happened in Paris; having accomplished his
+military duty, he applied for admission to the
+Police Bureau, as he would have embarked for the
+New World, for Mexico, or for Tonquin, in order
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;11]</span>
+to travel in a new country. Then he married, so
+that he might have, in his checkered existence,
+which was dangerous and wearying,&mdash;a haven of
+rest, a fireside of peaceful joy.</p>
+
+<p>So he lived a double life&mdash;tracking malefactors
+like a bloodhound, and cultivating his little garden.
+There he devoured old books, for which he had paid
+a few sous at some book stall; he read and pasted
+in old, odd leaves, re-bound them himself, and cut
+clippings from papers. He filled his round, bald
+head with a mass of facts which he investigated,
+classified, put into their proper place, to be brought
+forth as occasion demanded.</p>
+
+<p>He was an inquisitive person, a very inquisitive
+person, indeed. Curiosity filled his life. He performed
+with pleasure the most fatiguing and repulsive
+tasks that fall to a police officer's lot. They
+satisfied the original need of his nature, and permitted
+him to see everything, to hear everything,
+to penetrate into the most curious mysteries. To-day,
+in a dress suit with white tie, carelessly
+glancing over the crowds at the opera, to discover
+the thieves who took opera glasses, which they sent
+to accomplices in Germany to be sold; to-morrow,
+going in ragged clothes to arrest a murderer in
+some cutthroat den in the Glacière.</p>
+
+<p>M. Bernardet had taken possession of the office
+of the most powerful bankers, seized their books
+and made them go away with him in a cab. He
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;12]</span>
+had followed, by order, the intrigues of more than
+one fine lady, who owed to him her salvation.
+What if M. Bernardet had thought fit to speak?
+But he never spoke, and reporters came out worsted
+from any attempt at an interview with him. "An
+interview is silver, but silence is gold," he was
+wont to say, for he was not a fool.</p>
+
+<p>He had assisted at spiritual séances and attended
+secret meetings of Anarchists. He had occupied
+himself with occult matters, consulting the magicians
+of chance, and he had at his tongue's end the
+list of conspirators. He knew the true names of
+the famous Greeks who shuffled cards as one
+scouts about under an assumed name. The gambling
+hells were all familiar to him; he knew the
+churches in whose dark corners associates assembled
+to talk of <i>affairs</i>, who did not wish to be seen in
+beer shops nor spied upon in cabarets.</p>
+
+<p>Of the millions in Paris, he knew the secrets of
+this whirlpool of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>Oh! if he had ever become prefect of police, he
+would have studied his Paris, not at a distance,
+looking up statistics in books, or from the windows
+of a police bureau, but in the streets, in wretched
+lodgings, in hovels, in the asylums of misery and
+of crime. But Bernardet was not ambitious. Life
+suited him very well as he found it. His good
+wife had brought to him a small dower, and Bernardet,
+content with this poor little fortune, found
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;13]</span>
+that he had all the power he wanted&mdash;the power,
+when occasion demanded, of putting his hand on
+the shoulder of a former Minister and of taking a
+murderer by the throat.</p>
+
+<p>One day a financier, threatened with imprisonment
+in Mazas, pleased him very much. Bernardet
+entered his office to arrest him. He did not wish
+to have a row in the bank. The police officer and
+banker found themselves alone, face to face, in
+a very small room, a private office, with heavy
+curtains and a thick carpet, which stifled all
+noise.</p>
+
+<p>"Fifty thousand francs if you will let me
+escape," said the banker.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur le Comte jests"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"A hundred thousand!"</p>
+
+<p>"The pleasantry is very great, but it is a pleasantry."</p>
+
+<p>Then the Count, very pale, said: "And what
+if I crack your head?"</p>
+
+<p>"My brother officers are waiting for me,"
+Bernardet simply replied. "They know that our
+interview does not promise to be a long one, and
+this last proposition, which I wish to forget like the
+others, would only aggravate, I believe, if it became
+known, M. le Comte's case."</p>
+
+<p>Two minutes afterward the banker went out,
+preceding Bernardet, who followed him with bared
+head. The banker said to his employés, in an easy
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;14]</span>
+tone: "Good-by for the moment, Messieurs, I will
+return soon."</p>
+
+<p>It was also Bernardet who, visiting the Bank
+Hauts-Plateaux, said to his chief: "Monsieur
+Morel, something very serious is taking place
+there."</p>
+
+<p>"What is it, Bernardet?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know, but there is a meeting of the
+bank directors, and to-day, I saw two servants
+carry a man in there in an invalid's chair. It was
+the Baron de Cheylard."</p>
+
+<p>"Well?"</p>
+
+<p>"Baron Cheylard, in his quality of ex-Senator
+of the Second Empire, of ex-President of the
+Council, an ex-Commissioner of Industrial Expositions,
+is Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor.
+Grand Cross&mdash;that is to say, that he cannot be
+pursued only after a decision of the Council of the
+Order. And then, you understand&mdash;if the Bank
+of Hauts-Plateaux demands the presence of its
+Vice-president, the Baron of Cheylard, paralyzed,
+half dead"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It means that it has need of a thunderbolt?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Grand Cross, Monsieur. They would
+hesitate to deliver up to us the Grand Cross."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, Bernardet. The bank must be
+in a bad fix. And you are a very keen observer.
+The mind of a literary man, Bernardet."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;15]</span>
+"Oh, rather a photographic eye, Monsieur Morel.
+The habit of using a kodak."</p>
+
+<p>Thus Bernardet passed his life in Paris. Capable
+of amassing a fortune in some Tricoche Agency if
+he had wished to exploit, for his own benefit, his
+keen observing powers, he thought only of doing
+his duty, bringing up his little girls and loving his
+wife. Mme. Bernardet was amazed at the astonishing
+stories which her husband often related to her,
+and very proud that he was such an able man.</p>
+
+<p>M. Bernardet hurried toward M. Rovère's lodgings
+and Moniche trotted along beside him. As
+they neared the house they saw that a crowd had
+begun to collect.</p>
+
+<p>"It is known already," Moniche said. "Since I
+left they have begun"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"If I enter there," interrupted the officer, "it is
+all right. You have a right to call any one you
+choose to your aid. But I am not a Magistrate.
+You must go for a Commissary of Police."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, M. Bernardet," Moniche exclaimed. "You
+are worth more than all the Commissaries put together."</p>
+
+<p>"That does not make it so. A Commissary is a
+Commissary. Go and hunt for one."</p>
+
+<p>"But since you are here"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"But I am nothing. We must have a magistrate."</p>
+
+<p>"You are not a magistrate, then?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;16]</span>
+"I am simply a police spy."</p>
+
+<p>Then he crossed the street.</p>
+
+<p>The neighbors had gathered about the door like
+a swarm of flies around a honey-comb. A rumor
+had spread about which brought together a crowd
+animated by the morbid curiosity which is aroused
+in some minds of the hint of a mystery, and attracted
+by that strange magnetism which that sinister
+thing, "a crime," arouses. The women talked
+in shrill tones, inventing strange stories and incredible
+theories. Some of the common people
+hurried up to learn the news.</p>
+
+<p>At the moment Bernardet came up, followed by
+the concierge, a coupé stopped at the door and a tall
+man got out, asking:</p>
+
+<p>"Where is M. Morel? I wish to see M. Morel."</p>
+
+<p>The Chief had not yet been advised, and he was
+not there. But the tall young man suddenly recognized
+Bernardet, and laid hold of him, pulling
+him after him through the half-open door, which
+Moniche hastened to shut against the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"We must call some officers," Bernardet said to
+the concierge, "or the crowd will push in."</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Moniche was standing at the foot of the
+staircase, surrounded by the lodgers, men and
+women, to whom she was recounting, for the twentieth
+time, the story of how she had found M.
+Rovère with his throat cut.</p>
+
+<p>"I was going in to read the paper&mdash;the story&mdash;it
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;17]</span>
+is very interesting, that story. The moment
+had come when the Baron had insulted the American
+colonel. M. Rovère said to me only yesterday,
+poor man: 'I am anxious to find out which one
+will be killed&mdash;the colonel or the baron.' He will
+never know! And it is he"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Mme. Moniche," interrupted Bernardet, "have
+you any one whom you can send for a Commissary?"</p>
+
+<p>"Any one?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," added Moniche. "M. Bernardet needs a
+magistrate. It is not difficult to understand."</p>
+
+<p>"A Commissary?" repeated Mme. Moniche.
+"That is so. A Commissary; and what if I go for
+the Commissary myself, M. Bernardet?"</p>
+
+<p>"All right, provided you do not let the crowd
+take the house by assault when you open the door."</p>
+
+<p>"Fear nothing," the woman said, happy in having
+something important to do, in relating the horrible
+news to the Commissary how, when she was
+about to enter the room for the purpose of reading,
+the&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>While she was going toward the door Bernardet
+slowly mounted the two flights of stairs, followed
+by Moniche and the tall young man who had arrived
+in his coupé at a gallop, in order to get the
+first news of the murder and make a "scoop" for
+his paper.</p>
+
+<p>The news had traveled fast, and his paper had
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;18]</span>
+sent him in haste to get all the details of the affair
+which could be obtained.</p>
+
+<p>The three men reached M. Rovère's door. Moniche
+unlocked it and stepped back, Bernardet, with
+the reporter at his heels, note book in hand, entered
+the room.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;19]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER III.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Nothing</span> in the ante-chamber indicated that a
+tragedy had taken place there. There were pictures
+on the walls, pieces of faïence, some arms of
+rare kinds, Japanese swords and a Malay creese.
+Bernardet glanced at them as he passed by.</p>
+
+<p>"He is in the salon," said the concierge, in a low
+tone.</p>
+
+<p>One of the folding doors stood open, and, stopping
+on the threshold, in order to take in the entire
+aspect of the place, Bernardet saw in the centre of
+the room, lying on the floor in a pool of blood, the
+body of M. Rovère, clothed in a long, blue dressing
+gown, bound at the waist with a heavy cord, which
+lay in coils on the floor, like a serpent. The corpse
+was extended between the two windows, which
+opened on the Boulevard de Clichy, and Bernardet's
+first thought was that it was a miracle that
+the victim could have met his death in such a
+horrible manner, two steps from the passers-by on
+the street.</p>
+
+<p>"Whoever struck the blow did it quickly,"
+thought the police officer. He advanced softly
+toward the body, casting his eye upon the inert
+mass and taking in at a glance the smallest objects
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;20]</span>
+near it and the most minute details. He bent over
+and studied it thoroughly.</p>
+
+<p>M. Rovère seemed living in his tragic pose. The
+pale face, with its pointed and well-trimmed gray
+beard, expressed in its fierce immobility a sort of
+menacing anger. This man of about fifty years
+had evidently died cursing some one in his supreme
+agony. The frightful wound seemed like a large
+red cravat, which harmonized strangely with the
+half-whitened beard, the end of which was wet with
+blood.</p>
+
+<p>But what struck Bernardet above everything
+else, arrested his attention, and glued him to the
+spot, was the look, the extraordinary expression
+in the eyes. The mouth was open, as if to cry out,
+the eyes seemed to menace some one, and the lips
+about to speak.</p>
+
+<p>They were frightful. Those tragic eyes were
+wide open, as if transfixed by fear or fury.</p>
+
+<p>They seemed fathomless, staring, ready to start
+from their sockets. The eyebrows above them
+were black and bristling. They seemed living eyes
+in that dead face. They told of a final struggle,
+of some atrocious duel of looks and of words.
+They appeared, in their ferocious immobility, as
+when they gazed upon the murderer, eye to eye,
+face to face.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet looked at the hands.</p>
+
+<p>They were contracted and seemed, in some obstinate
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;21]</span>
+resistance, to have clung to the neck or the
+clothing of the assassin.</p>
+
+<p>"There ought to be blood under the nails, since
+he made a struggle," said Bernardet, thinking aloud.</p>
+
+<p>And Paul Rodier, the reporter, hurriedly wrote,
+"There was blood under the nails."</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet returned again and again to the eyes&mdash;those
+wide-open eyes, frightful, terrible eyes,
+which, in their fierce depths, retained without
+doubt the image or phantom of some nightmare of
+death.</p>
+
+<p>He touched the dead man's hand. The flesh
+had become cold and <i>rigor mortis</i> was beginning to
+set in.</p>
+
+<p>The reporter saw the little man take from his
+pocket a sort of rusty silver ribbon and unroll it,
+and heard him ask Moniche to take hold of one end
+of it; this ribbon or thread looked to Paul Rodier
+like brass wire. Bernardet prepared his kodak.</p>
+
+<p>"Above everything else," murmured Bernardet,
+"let us preserve the expression of those eyes."</p>
+
+<p>"Close the shutters. The darkness will be more
+complete."</p>
+
+<p>The reporter assisted Moniche in order to hasten
+the work. The shutters closed, the room was quite
+dark, and Bernardet began his task. Counting off
+a few steps, he selected the best place from which
+to take the picture.</p>
+
+<p>"Be kind enough to light the end of the magnesium
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;22]</span>
+wire," he said to the concierge. "Have you
+any matches?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, M. Bernardet."</p>
+
+<p>The police office indicated by a sign of the head,
+a match safe which he had noticed on entering the
+room.</p>
+
+<p>"There are some there."</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet had with one sweeping glance of the
+eye taken in everything in the room; the fauteuils,
+scarcely moved from their places; the pictures
+hanging on the walls; the mirrors; the bookcases;
+the cabinets, etc.</p>
+
+<p>Moniche went to the mantelpiece and took a
+match from the box. It was M. Rovère himself
+who furnished the light by which a picture of his
+own body was taken.</p>
+
+<p>"We could obtain no picture in this room without
+the magnesium wire," said the agent, as calm
+while taking a photograph of the murdered man,
+as he had been a short time ago in his garden.
+"The light is insufficient. When I say: 'Go!'
+Moniche you must light the wire, and I will take
+three or four negatives. Do you understand?
+Stand there to my left. Now! Attention!"</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet took his position and the porter stood
+ready, match and wire in hand, like a gunner who
+awaits the order to fire.</p>
+
+<p>"Go!" said the agent.</p>
+
+<p>A rapid, clear flame shot up; and suddenly
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;23]</span>
+lighted the room. The pale face seemed livid, the
+various objects in the room took on a fantastic appearance,
+in this sort of tempestuous apotheosis,
+and Paul Rodier hastily inscribed on his writing
+pad: "Picturesque&mdash;bizarre&mdash;marvelous&mdash;devilish&mdash;suggestive."</p>
+
+<p>"Let us try it again," said M. Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>For the third time in this weird light the visage
+of the dead man appeared, whiter, more sinister,
+frightful; the wound deeper, the gash redder; and
+the eyes, those wide-open, fixed, tragic, menacing,
+speaking eyes&mdash;eyes filled with scorn, with hate,
+with terror, with the ferocious resistance of a last
+struggle for life; immovable, eloquent&mdash;seemed
+under the fantastic light to glitter, to be alive, to
+menace some one.</p>
+
+<p>"That is all," said Bernardet, very softly. "If
+with these three negatives"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>He stopped to look around toward the door, which
+was closed. Someone was raining ringing blows
+on the door, loud and imperative.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the Commissary; open the door, Moniche."</p>
+
+<p>The reporter was busy taking notes, describing
+the salon, sketching it, drawing a plan for his journal.</p>
+
+<p>It was, in fact, the Commissary, who was followed
+by Mme. Moniche and a number of curious
+persons who had forced their way in when the
+front door was opened.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;24]</span>
+The Commissary, before entering, took a comprehensive
+survey of the room, and said in a short
+tone: "Every one must go out. Madame, make
+all these people go out. No one must enter."</p>
+
+<p>There arose an uproar&mdash;each one tried to explain
+his right to be there. They were all possessed
+with an irresistible desire to assist at this sinister
+investigation.</p>
+
+<p>"But we belong to the press!"</p>
+
+<p>"The reporters may enter when they have
+showed their cards," the Commissary replied.
+"The others&mdash;no!" There was a murmur from
+the crowd.</p>
+
+<p>"The others&mdash;no!" repeated the Commissary.
+He made a sign to two officers who accompanied
+him, and they demanded the reporters' cards of
+identification. The concourse of curious ones rebelled,
+protested, growled and declaimed against
+the representatives of the press, who took precedence
+everywhere.</p>
+
+<p>"The Fourth Power!" shouted an old man from
+the foot of the staircase. He lived in the house
+and passed for a correspondent of the Institute.
+He shouted furiously: "When a crime is committed
+under my very roof, I am not even allowed
+to write an account of it, and strangers, because
+they are reporters, can have the exclusive privilege
+of writing it up!"</p>
+
+<p>The Commissary did not listen to him, but those
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;25]</span>
+who were his fellow-sufferers applauded him to the
+echo. The Commissary shrugged his shoulders at
+the hand-clappings.</p>
+
+<p>"It is but right," he said to the reporter, "that
+the agents of the press should be admitted in preference
+to any one else. Do you think that it is
+easy to discover a criminal? I have been a journalist,
+too. Yes, at times. In the Quartier, occasionally.
+I have even written a piece for the
+theatre. But we will not talk of that. Enter!
+Enter, I beg of you&mdash;and we shall see"&mdash;and elegant,
+amiable, polished, smiling, he looked toward
+M. Bernardet, and his eyes asked the question:
+"Where is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"Here! M. le Commissaire."</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet stood respectfully in front of his superior
+officer, as a soldier carrying arms, and the
+Commissary, in his turn, approached the body,
+while the curious ones, quietly kept back by Moniche,
+formed a half circle around the pale and
+bloody corpse. The Commissary, like Bernardet,
+was struck by the haughty expression of that livid
+face.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor man!" he said, shaking his head. "He
+is superb! superb! He reminds me of the dead
+Duke de Guise, in Paul Delaroche's picture. I
+have seen it also at Chantilly, in Gérôme's celebrated
+picture of <i>Le Duel de Pierrot</i>."</p>
+
+<p>Possibly in speaking aloud his thoughts, the
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;26]</span>
+Commissary was talking so that the reporters
+might hear him. They stood, notebooks in hand,
+taking notes, and Paul Rodier, catching the names,
+wrote rapidly in his book: "M. Desbrière, the
+learned Commissary, so artistic, so well disposed
+toward the press, was at one time a journalist. He
+noticed that the victim's pale face, with its strong
+personal characteristics, resembled the dead Duke
+de Guise, in Gérôme's celebrated picture, which
+hangs in the galleries at Chantilly."</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;27]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IV.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">M. Desbrière</span> now began the investigation. He
+questioned the porter and portress, while he studied
+the salon in detail. Bernardet roamed about, examining
+at very close range each and every object
+in the room, as a dog sniffs and scents about for a
+trail.</p>
+
+<p>"What kind of a man was your lodger?" was
+the first question.</p>
+
+<p>Moniche replied in a tone which showed that he
+felt that his tenant had been accused of something.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Monsieur le Commissaire, a very worthy
+man, I swear it!"</p>
+
+<p>"The best man in the world," added his wife,
+wiping her eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"I am not inquiring about his moral qualities,"
+M. Desbrière said. "What I want to know is, how
+did he live and whom did he receive?"</p>
+
+<p>"Few people. Very few," the porter answered.
+"The poor man liked solitude. He lived here
+eight years. He received a few friends, but, I repeat,
+a very small number."</p>
+
+<p>M. Rovère had rented the apartment in 1888, he
+installed himself in his rooms, with his pictures
+and books. The porter was much astonished at
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;28]</span>
+the number of pictures and volumes which the
+new lodger brought. It took a long time to settle,
+as M. Rovère was very fastidious and personally
+superintended the hanging of his canvases and the
+placing of his books. He thought that he must
+have been an artist, although he said that he was a
+retired merchant. He had heard him say one day
+that he had been Consul to some foreign country&mdash;Spain
+or South America.</p>
+
+<p>He lived quite simply, although they thought
+that he must be rich. Was he a miser? Not at
+all. Very generous, on the contrary. But, plainly,
+he shunned the world. He had chosen their apartment
+because it was in a retired spot, far from the
+Parisian boulevards. Four or five years before a
+woman, clothed in black, had come there. A woman
+who seemed still young&mdash;he had not seen her
+face, which was covered with a heavy black veil&mdash;she
+had visited M. Rovère quite often. He always
+accompanied her respectfully to the door when she
+went away. Once or twice he had gone out with
+her in a carriage. No, he did not know her name.
+M. Rovère's life was regulated with military precision.
+He usually held himself upright&mdash;of late
+sickness had bowed him somewhat; he went out
+whenever he was able, going as far as the Bois and
+back. Then, after breakfasting, he shut himself
+up in his library and read and wrote. He passed
+nearly all of his evenings at home.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;29]</span>
+"He never made us wait up for him, as he never
+went to the theatre," said Moniche.</p>
+
+<p>The malady from which he suffered, and which
+puzzled the physicians, had seized him on his return
+from a Summer sojourn at Aix-les-Bains for
+his health. The neighbors had at once noticed the
+effect produced by the cure. When he went away
+he had been somewhat troubled with rheumatism, but
+when he returned he was a confirmed sufferer. Since
+the beginning of September he had not been out,
+receiving no visits, except from his doctor, and
+spending whole days in his easy chair or upon his
+lounge, while Mme. Moniche read the daily papers
+to him.</p>
+
+<p>"When I say that he saw no one," said the
+porter, "I make a mistake. There was that gentleman"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And he looked at his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"What gentleman?"</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Moniche shook her head, as if he ought
+not to answer.</p>
+
+<p>"Of whom do you speak?" repeated the Commissary,
+looking at both of them.</p>
+
+<p>At this moment, Bernardet, standing on the
+threshold of the library adjoining the salon, looked
+searchingly about the room in which M. Rovère
+ordinarily spent his time, and which he had probably
+left to meet his fate. His ear was as quick
+to hear as his eye to see, and as he heard the
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;30]</span>
+question he softly approached and listened for the
+answer.</p>
+
+<p>"What gentleman? and what did he do?" asked
+the Commissary, a little brusquely, for he noticed a
+hesitation to reply in both Moniche and his wife.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, and what does this mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, Monsieur le Commissaire, it is this&mdash;perhaps
+it means nothing," and the concierge went
+on to tell how, one evening, a very fine gentleman,
+and very polished, moreover, had come to the house
+and asked to see M. Rovère; he had gone to his
+apartment, and had remained a long time. It was,
+he thought, about the middle of October, and Mme.
+Moniche, who had gone upstairs to light the gas,
+met the man as he was coming out of M. Rovère's
+rooms, and had noticed at the first glance the
+troubled air of the individual. (Moniche already
+called the gentleman <i>the 'individual,'</i>) who was
+very pale and whose eyes were red.</p>
+
+<p>Then, at some time or other, the individual had
+made another visit to M. Rovère. More than once
+the portress had tried to learn his name. Up to
+this moment she had not succeeded. One day she
+asked M. Rovère who it was, and he very shortly
+asked her what business it was of hers. She did
+not insist, but she watched the individual with a
+vague doubt.</p>
+
+<p>"Instinct. Monsieur; my instinct told me"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Enough," interrupted M. Desbrière; "if we had
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;31]</span>
+only instinct to guide us we should make some
+famous blunders."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, it was not only by instinct, Monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! ah! let us hear it"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet, with his eyes fastened upon Mme.
+Moniche, did not lose a syllable of her story, which
+her husband occasionally interrupted to correct her
+or to complete a statement, or to add some detail.
+The corpse, with mouth open and fiery, ferocious
+eyes, seemed also to listen.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Moniche, as we already know, entered M.
+Rovère's apartment whenever she wished. She
+was his landlady, his reader, his friend. Rovère
+was brusque, but he was good. So it was nothing
+strange when the woman, urged by curiosity, suddenly
+appeared in his rooms, for him to say: "Ah,
+you here? Is that you? I did not call you." An
+electric bell connected the rooms with the concierge
+lodge. Usually she would reply: "I thought I
+heard the bell." And she would profit by the occasion
+to fix up the fire, which M. Rovère, busy with
+his reading or writing, had forgotten to attend to.
+She was much attached to him. She did not wish
+to have him suffer from the cold, and recently had
+entered as often as possible, under one pretext or
+another, knowing that he was ill, and desiring to
+be at hand in case of need. When, one evening,
+about eight days before, she had entered the room
+while the visitor, whom Moniche called the individual,
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;32]</span>
+was there, the portress had been astonished
+to see the two men standing before Rovère's iron
+safe, the door wide open and both looking at some
+papers spread out on the desk.</p>
+
+<p>Rovère, with his sallow, thin face, was holding
+some papers in his hand, and the other was bent
+over, looking with eager eyes at&mdash;Mme. Moniche
+had seen them well&mdash;some rent rolls, bills and deeds.
+Perceiving Mme. Moniche, who stood hesitating on
+the threshold, M. Rovère frowned, mechanically
+made a move as if to gather up the scattered papers.
+But the portress said, "Pardon!" and quickly withdrew.
+Only&mdash;ah! only&mdash;she had time to see, to
+see plainly the iron safe, the heavy doors standing
+open, the keys hanging from the lock, and M.
+Rovère in his dressing gown; the official papers,
+yellow and blue, others bearing seals and a ribbon,
+lying there before him. He seemed in a bad humor,
+but said nothing. Not a word.</p>
+
+<p>"And the other one?"</p>
+
+<p>The other man was as pale as M. Rovère. He
+resembled him, moreover. It was, perhaps, a relative.
+Mme. Moniche had noticed the expression
+with which he contemplated those papers and the
+fierce glance which he cast at her when she pushed
+open the door without knowing what sight awaited
+her. She had gone downstairs, but she did not at
+once tell her husband about what she had seen. It
+was some time afterward. The individual had come
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;33]</span>
+again. He remained closeted with M. Rovère for
+some hours. The sick man was lying on the lounge.
+The portress had heard them through the door talking
+in low tones. She did not know what they
+said. She could hear only a murmur. And she
+had very good ears, too. But she heard only confused
+sounds, not one plain word. When, however,
+the visitor was going away she heard Rovère say
+to him: "I ought to have told all earlier."</p>
+
+<p>Did the dead man possess a secret which weighed
+heavily upon him, and which he shared with that
+other? And the other? Who was he? Perhaps
+an accomplice. Everything she had said belonged
+to the Commissary of Police and to the press. She
+had told her story with omissions, with timorous
+looks, with sighs of doubts and useless gestures.
+Bernardet listened, noting each word, the purposes
+of this portress, the melodramatic gossip in certain
+information in which he verified the precision&mdash;all
+this was engraven on his brain, as earlier in the
+day the expression of the dead man's eyes had been
+reflected in the kodak.</p>
+
+<p>He tried to distinguish, as best he could, the undeniable
+facts in this first deposition, when a woman
+of the people, garrulous, indiscreet, gossiping and
+zealous, has the joy of playing a rôle. He mentally
+examined her story, with the interruptions which
+her husband made when she accused the individual.
+He stopped her with a look, placing his hand on
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;34]</span>
+her arm and said: "One must wait! One does
+not know. He had the appearance of a worthy
+man." The woman, pointing out with a grand
+gesture, the body lying upon the floor, said: "Oh,
+well! And did not M. Rovère have the appearance
+of a worthy man also? And did it hinder him from
+coming to that?"</p>
+
+<p>Over Bernardet's face a mocking little smile
+passed.</p>
+
+<p>"He always had the appearance of a worthy
+man," he said, looking at the dead man, "and he
+even seemed like a worthy man who looked at
+rascals with courage. I am certain," slowly added
+the officer, "that if one could know the last thought
+in that brain which thinks no more, could see in
+those unseeing eyes the last image upon which they
+looked, one would learn all that need be known
+about that individual of whom you speak and the
+manner of his death."</p>
+
+<p>"Possibly he killed himself," said the Commissary.</p>
+
+<p>But the hypothesis of suicide was not possible,
+as Bernardet remarked to him, much to the great
+contempt of the reporters who were covering their
+notebooks with a running handwriting and with
+hieroglyphics. The wound was too deep to have
+been made by the man's own hand. And, besides,
+they would find the weapon with which that horrible
+gash had been made, near at hand. There
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;35]</span>
+was no weapon of any kind near the body. The
+murderer had either carried it away with him in
+his flight or he had thrown it away in some other
+part of the apartment. They would soon know.</p>
+
+<p>They need not even wait for an autopsy to determine
+that it was an assassination. "That is
+evident," interrupted the Commissary; "the autopsy
+will be made, however."</p>
+
+<p>And, with an insistence which surprised the
+Commissary a little, Bernardet, in courteous tones,
+evidently haunted by one particular idea, begged
+and almost supplicated M. Desbrière to send for
+the Attorney for the Republic, so that the corpse
+could be taken as soon as possible to the Morgue.</p>
+
+<p>"Poor man!" exclaimed Mme. Moniche. "To
+the Morgue! To the Morgue!" Bernardet calmed
+her with a word.</p>
+
+<p>"It is necessary. It is the law. Oh, Monsieur
+le Commissaire, let us do it quickly, quickly. I
+will tell you why. Time will be gained&mdash;I mean
+to say, saved&mdash;and the criminal found."</p>
+
+<p>Then, while M. Desbrière sent an officer to the
+telephone office to ask for the Attorney for the Republic
+to come as quickly as possible to the Boulevard
+de Clichy, Mme. Moniche freed her mind to
+the reporters in regard to some philosophical considerations
+upon human destiny, which condemned
+in so unforeseen, so odiously brutal a manner, a
+good lodger, as respectable as M. Rovère, to be laid
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;36]</span>
+upon a slab at the Morgue, like a thief or a vagabond&mdash;he
+who went out but seldom, and who "loved
+his home so much."</p>
+
+<p>"The everlasting antithesis of life!" replied
+Paul Rodier, who made a note of his reflection.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;37]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER V.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Some</span> time passed before the arrival of the Attorney,
+and through the closed Venetian blinds the
+murmurs of the crowd collected below could be
+heard. The Commissary wrote his report on the
+corner of a table, by the light of a single candle,
+and now and then asked for some detail of Bernardet,
+who seemed very impatient. A heavy
+silence had fallen on the room; those who a short
+time before had exchanged observations in loud
+tones, since the Commissary had finished with Mme.
+Moniche had dropped their voices and spoke in
+hushed tones, as if they were in a sick room. Suddenly
+a bell rang, sending shrill notes through the
+silent room. Bernardet remarked that no doubt,
+the Attorney had arrived. He looked at his watch,
+a simple, silver Geneva watch, but which he prized
+highly&mdash;a present from his wife&mdash;and murmured:</p>
+
+<p>"There is yet time." It was, in fact, the Attorney
+for the Republic, who came in, accompanied by
+the Examining Magistrate, M. Ginory, whom criminals
+called "the vise," because he pressed them so
+hard when he got hold of them. M. Ginory was
+in the Attorney's office when the officer had telephoned
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;38]</span>
+to M. Jacquelin des Audrays, and the latter
+had asked him to accompany him to the scene
+of the murder. Bernardet knew them both well.
+He had more than once been associated with M.
+Audrays. He also knew M. Ginory as a very just,
+a very good man, although he was much feared,
+for, while searching for the truth of a matter he
+reserved judgment of those whom he had fastened
+in his vise. M. Audrays was still a young
+man, slender and correct, tightly buttoned up in
+his redingote, smooth-shaven, wearing eyeglasses.</p>
+
+<p>The red ribbon in his buttonhole seemed a little
+too large, like a rosette worn there through
+coquetry. M. Ginory, on the contrary, wore
+clothes too large for him; his necktie was tied as
+if it was a black cord; his hat was half brushed;
+he was short, stout and sanguine, with his little
+snub nose and his mouth, with its heavy jaws. He
+seemed, beside the worldly magistrate, like a sort
+of professor, or savant, or collector, who, with a
+leather bag stuffed with books, seemed more fitted
+to pore over some brochures or precious old volumes
+than to spend his time over musty law documents.
+Robust and active, with his fifty-five years,
+he entered that house of crime as an expert topographist
+makes a map, and who scarcely needs a
+guide, even in an unknown country. He went
+straight to the body, which, as we have said, lay
+between the two front windows, and both he and
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;39]</span>
+M. Audrays stood a moment looking at it, taking
+in, as had the others, all the details which might
+serve to guide them in their researches. The Attorney
+for the Republic asked the Commissary if
+he had made his report, and the latter handed it to
+him. He read it with satisfied nods of his head;
+during this time Bernardet had approached M.
+Ginory, saluted him and asked for a private interview
+with a glance of his eye; the Examining
+Magistrate understood what he meant.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Is it you, Bernardet? You wish to
+speak to me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Monsieur Ginory. I beg of you to get
+the body to the dissecting room for the autopsy as
+soon as possible." He had quietly and almost imperceptibly
+drawn the Magistrate away toward a
+window, away from the reporters, who wished to
+hear every word that was uttered, where he had
+him quite by himself, in a corner of the room near
+the library door.</p>
+
+<p>"There is an experiment which must be tried,
+Monsieur, and it ought to tempt a man like you,"
+he said.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet knew very well that, painstaking even
+to a fault, taken with any new scientific discoveries,
+with a receptive mind, eager to study and to
+learn, M. Ginory would not refuse him any help
+which would aid justice. Had not the Academy
+of Moral and Political Sciences crowned, the year
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;40]</span>
+before, M. Ginory's book on "The Duties of a
+Magistrate to the Discoveries of Science?"</p>
+
+<p>The word "experiment" was not said in order
+to frighten M. Ginory.</p>
+
+<p>"What do you mean by that, Bernardet?" the
+Magistrate asked. Bernardet shook his head as if
+to intimate that the explanation was too long to
+give him there. They were not alone. Some one
+might hear them. And if a journal should publish
+the strange proposition which he wished to&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Ah!" exclaimed the Examining Magistrate,
+"then it is something strange, your experiment?"</p>
+
+<p>"Any Magistrate but you would think it wild,
+unreasonable, or ridiculous, which is worse. But
+you&mdash;oh! I do not say it to flatter you, Monsieur,"
+quickly added the police officer, seeing that the
+praise troubled this man, who always shrank from
+it. "I speak thus because it is the very truth,
+and any one else would treat me as crack-brained.
+But you&mdash;no!"</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory looked curiously at the little man,
+whose attitude was humble and even supplicating,
+and seemed to seek a favorable response, and whose
+eyes sparkled and indicated that his idea was no
+common one.</p>
+
+<p>"What is that room there?" asked M. Ginory,
+pointing to the half-open library door.</p>
+
+<p>"It is the study of M. Rovère&mdash;the victim"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;41]</span>&mdash;
+"Let us go in there," said M. Ginory.</p>
+
+<p>In this room no one could hear them; they could
+speak freely. On entering, the Examining Magistrate
+mechanically cast his eye over the books,
+stopping at such and such a title of a rare work,
+and, seating himself in a low, easy chair, covered
+with Caramanie, he made a sign to the police
+officer to speak. Bernardet stood, hat in hand, in
+front of him.</p>
+
+<p>"M. le Juge," Bernardet began, "I beg your
+pardon for asking you to grant me an interview.
+But, allowing for the difference in our positions,
+which is very great, I am, like you, a scholar; very
+curious. I shall never belong to the Institute, and
+you will"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Go on, Bernardet."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will belong to it, M. Ginory, but I
+strive also, in my lower sphere, to keep myself <i>au
+courant</i> with all that is said and with all that is
+written. I was in the service of the Academy
+when your beautiful work was crowned, and when
+the perpetual secretary spoke of those Magistrates
+who knew how to unite the love of letters with a
+study of justice; I thought that lower down, much
+lower down on the ladder, M. le Juge, he might have
+also searched for and found some men who studied
+to learn and to do their best in doing their duty."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I know you, Bernardet. Your chief has
+often spoken of you."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;42]</span>
+"I know that M. Leriche is very good to me.
+But it is not for me to boast of that. I wish only
+to inspire confidence in you, because what I wish to
+say to you is so strange&mdash;so very strange"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet suddenly stopped. "I know," he began,
+"that if I were to say to a physician what I
+am about to say to you he would think I ought to
+be shut up in Sainte-Anne. And yet I am not
+crazy, I beg of you to believe. No! but I have
+searched and searched. It seems to me that there
+is a mass of inventions, of discoveries, which we
+police officers ought to make use of. And, although
+I am a sub-Inspector"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Go on! Go on!" said the Magistrate, quickly,
+with a movement of the head toward the open
+door of the salon, where the Attorney for the Republic
+was conducting the investigation, and his
+nod seemed to say: "They are at work in there&mdash;let
+us make haste."</p>
+
+<p>"I will be as brief as possible," said Bernardet,
+who understood what he meant.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," (and his tone became rapid, precise,
+running up and down like a ball), "thirty years,
+or, rather, to be exact, twenty-six years ago, some
+American journals, not political, but scientific,
+published the fact that the daguerrotype&mdash;we have
+made long strides since then in photography&mdash;had
+permitted them to find in the retina of a murdered
+man's eye the image of the one who struck him."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;43]</span>
+"Yes, I know," said M. Ginory.</p>
+
+<p>"In 1860, I was too young, and I had no desire
+to prove the truth of this discovery. I adore
+photography as I adore my profession. I pass my
+leisure hours in taking instantaneous pictures, in
+developing them, printing, and finishing them.
+The idea of what I am about to propose to you
+came to me by chance. I bought upon one of the
+quays a volume of the Societé de Medicine Legale
+of 1869, in which Dr. Vernois gives an account of
+a communication sent to the society by a physician,
+who also sent photographic proofs, thus indorsed:
+'Photographs taken of the retina of a woman assassinated
+the 14th of June, 1868.'"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," again said M. Ginory. "It was a communication
+from Dr. Bourion, of Darnez."</p>
+
+<p>"Precisely."</p>
+
+<p>"And the proof sent by the Doctor showed the
+instant when, after striking the mother, the assassin
+killed the child, while the dog sprang toward
+the little carriage in which the little one lay."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Monsieur Ginory."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, but my poor Bernardet, Dr. Vernois,
+since you have read his report"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"By chance, Monsieur, I found it on a book
+stall and it has kept running in my head ever since,
+over and over and over again."</p>
+
+<p>"Dr. Vernois, my poor fellow, made many experiments.
+At first the proof sent was so confused,
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;44]</span>
+so hazy, that no one who had not seen what
+Bourion had written could have told what it was.
+If Vernois, who was a very scientific man, could
+find nothing&mdash;nothing, I repeat&mdash;which justified Dr.
+Bourion's declarations, what do you expect that
+any one else could make of those researches? Do
+not talk any more or even think any more about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, Monsieur Ginory; one
+can and ought to think about it. In any case, I
+am thinking about it."</p>
+
+<p>A smile of doubt crossed M. Ginory's lips.
+Bernardet quickly added: "Photography of the
+invisible has been proven. Are not the Roentgen
+Rays, the famous X Rays, as incredible as that
+photography can find the image of a murderer
+on the retina of a dead person's eye? They invent
+some foolish things, those Americans, but
+they often presage the truth. Do they not catch,
+by photography, the last sighs of the dying? Do
+they not fix upon the film or on plates that mysterious
+thing which haunts us, the occult? They
+throw bridges across unknown abysses as over
+great bodies of water or from one precipice to
+another, and they reach the other side. I beg
+your pardon, Monsieur," and the police officer
+stopped short in his enthusiastic defence as he
+caught sight of M. Ginory's astonished face;
+"I seem to have been making a speech, a thing I
+detest."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;45]</span>
+"Why do you say that to me? Because I
+looked astonished at what you have told me? I
+am not only surprised, I am charmed. Go on! Go
+on!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! well, what seemed folly yesterday will be
+an established fact to-morrow. A fact is a fact.
+Dr. Vernois had better have tested again and
+again his contradictory experiments. Dr. Bourion's
+experiments had preceded his own. If Dr.
+Vernois saw nothing in the picture taken of the
+retina of the eye of the woman assassinated June
+14, 1868, I have seen something&mdash;yes, I have
+seen with a magnifying glass, while studying
+thoroughly the proof given to the society and
+reproduced in the bulletin of Volume I., No. 2,
+of 1870; I have seen deciphered the image which
+Dr. Bourion saw, and which Dr. Vernois did not
+see. Ah! it was confused, the proof was hazy.
+It was scarcely recognizable, I confess. But
+there are mirrors which are not very clear and
+which reflect clouded vision; nevertheless, the
+image is there. And I have seen, or what
+one calls seen, the phantom of the murderer
+which Dr. Bourion saw, and which escaped the eyes
+of the member of the Academy of Medicine and of
+the Hygiene Council, Honorary Physician of the
+Hospital, if you please."</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory, who had listened to the officer with
+curiosity, began to laugh, and remarked to Bernardet
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;46]</span>
+that, according to this reasoning, illustrated
+medical science would find itself sacrificed to the instinct,
+the divination of a provincial physician, and
+that it was only too easy to put the Academicians
+in the wrong and the Independents in the right.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, Monsieur, pardon; I put no one in the
+right or wrong. Dr. Bourion believed that he had
+made a discovery. Dr. Vernois was persuaded that
+Dr. Bourion had discovered nothing at all. Each
+had the courage of his conviction. What I contest
+is that, for twenty-six years, no one has experimented,
+no one has made any researches, since
+the first experiment, and that Dr. Bourion's communication
+has been simply dropped and forgotten."</p>
+
+<p>"I ask your pardon in my turn, Bernardet," replied
+M. Ginory, a little quizzically. "I have also
+studied the question, which seems to me a curious"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Have you photographed any yourself, M. Ginory?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! There is where the proof is."</p>
+
+<p>"But in 1877, the very learned Doyen of the
+Academy of Medicine, M. Brouardel, whose great
+wisdom, and whose sovereign opinion was law, one
+of those men who is an honor to his country, told
+me that when he was in Heidelberg he had heard
+Professor Kuhne say that he had studied this same
+question; he had made impressions of the retina
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;47]</span>
+of the eye in the following cases: After the death
+of a dog or a wolf, he had taken out the eye and replaced
+it with the back part of the eye in front;
+then he took a very strong light and placed it in
+front of the eye and between the eye and the light
+he placed a small grating. This grating, after an
+exposure of a quarter of an hour, was visible upon
+the retina. But those are very different experiments
+from the ones one hears of in America."</p>
+
+<p>"They could see the bars in the grating? If that
+was visible, why could not the visage of the murderer
+be found there?"</p>
+
+<p>"Eh! Other experiments have been attempted,
+even after those of which Professor Kuhne told
+our compatriot. Every one, you understand, has
+borne only negative results, and M. Brouardel
+could tell you, better than I, that in the physiological
+and oculistic treatises, published during the
+last ten years, no allusion has been made to the
+preservation of the image on the retina after death.
+It is an <i>affair classé</i>, Bernardet."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Monsieur, yet"&mdash;and the police officer
+hesitated. Shaking his head, he again repeated:
+"Yet&mdash;yet!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are not convinced?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Monsieur Ginory, and shall I tell you why?
+You, yourself, in spite of the testimony of illustrious
+savants, still doubt. I pray you to pardon
+me, but I see it in your eyes."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;48]</span>
+"That is still another way to use the retina," said
+Ginory, laughing. "You read one's thoughts."</p>
+
+<p>"No, Monsieur, but you are a man of too great
+intelligence to say to yourself that there is nothing
+in this world <i>classé</i>, that every matter can be
+taken up again. The idea has come to me to try
+the experiment if I am permitted. Yes, Monsieur,
+those eyes, did you see them, the eyes of the dead
+man? They seemed to speak; they seemed to see.
+Their expression is of lifelike intensity. They see,
+I tell you, they see! They perceive something
+which we cannot see, and which is frightful. They
+bear&mdash;and no one can convince me to the contrary&mdash;they
+bear on the retina the reflection of the last
+being whom the murdered man saw before he died.
+They keep it still, they still retain that image.
+They are going to hold an autopsy; they will tell
+us that the throat is cut. Eh! Parbleu! We
+know it well. We see it for ourselves. Moniche,
+the porter, knows it as well as any doctor. But
+when one questions those eyes, when one searches
+in that black chamber where the image appears as
+on a plate, when one demands of those eyes their
+secret, I am convinced that one will find it."</p>
+
+<p>"You are obstinate, Bernardet."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, very obstinate, Monsieur Ginory, and very
+patient. The pictures which I took with my kodak
+will give us the expression, the interior, so to
+speak; those which we would take of the retina
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;49]</span>
+would reveal to us the secret of the agony. And,
+moreover, unless I deceive myself, what danger attends
+such an experiment? One opens the poor
+eyes, and that is sinister, certainly, but when one
+holds an autopsy at the Morgue, when one enlarges
+the gash in the throat in order to study it, when
+one dissects the body, is it any more respectful
+or proper? Ah! Monsieur, if I but had your
+power"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory seemed quite struck with all that the
+police officer had said to him, but while he still
+held to his convictions, he did not seem quite averse
+to trying the experiment. Who can say to science
+"Halt!" and impose upon it limits which cannot
+be passed? No one!</p>
+
+<p>"We will see, Bernardet."</p>
+
+<p>And in that "we will see" there was already a
+half promise.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! if you only will, and what would it cost
+you?" added Bernardet, still urgent; indeed, almost
+suppliant.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us finish this now. They are waiting for
+me," said the Examining Magistrate.</p>
+
+<p>As he left M. Rovère's study, he instinctively
+cast a glance at the rare volumes, with their costly
+bindings, and he reentered the salon where M.
+Jacquelin des Audrays had, without doubt, finished
+his examination.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;50]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VI.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> attorney for the Republic called in the Examining
+Magistrate. Nothing more was to be done.
+The Magistrate had studied the position of the
+corpse, examined the wound, and now, having told
+M. Ginory his impressions, he did not hide from
+him his belief that the crime had been committed
+by a professional, as the stroke of the knife across
+the throat had been given neatly, scientifically, according
+to all the established rules.</p>
+
+<p>"One might well take it for the work of a professional
+butcher."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, without doubt, M. Ginory; but one does
+not know. Brute force&mdash;a strong blow&mdash;can produce
+exactly what science can."</p>
+
+<p>More agitated than he wished to appear by the
+strange conversation between the Agent of Sureté
+and himself, the Examining Magistrate stood at the
+foot of the corpse and gazed, with a fixity almost
+fierce, not at the gaping wound of which M. Jacquelin
+des Audrays had spoken to him, but at those
+eyes,&mdash;those fixed eyes, those eyes which no opacity
+had yet invaded, which, open, frightful, seemingly
+burning with anger, menacing, full of accusations
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;51]</span>
+of some sort and animated with vengeance, gave
+him a look, immovable, most powerful.</p>
+
+<p>It was true! it was true! They lived! those eyes
+spoke. They cried to him for justice. They retained
+the expression of some atrocious vision: the
+expression of violent rage. They menaced some
+one&mdash;who? If the picture of some one was graven
+there, was it not the last image reflected on the
+little mirror of the retina? What if a face was reflected
+there! What if it was still retained in the
+depths of those wide-open eyes! That strange
+creature, Bernardet, half crazy, enthused with new
+ideas, with the mysteries which traverse chimerical
+brains, troubled him&mdash;Ginory, a man of statistics
+and of facts.</p>
+
+<p>But truly those dead eyes seemed to appeal, to
+speak, to designate some one. What more eloquent,
+what more terrible witness could there be than the
+dead man himself, if it was possible for his eyes to
+speak; if that organ of life should contain, shut
+up within it, preserved, the secret of death? Bernardet,
+whose eyes never left the magistrate's face,
+ought to have been content, for it plainly expressed
+doubt, a hesitation, and the police officer heard him
+cursing under his breath.</p>
+
+<p>"Folly! Stupidity! Bah! we shall see!"</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet was filled with hope. M. Ginory, the
+Examining Magistrate, was, moreover, convinced
+that, for the present, and the sooner the better, the
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;52]</span>
+corpse should be sent to the Morgue. There, only,
+could a thorough and scientific examination be
+made. The reporter listened intently to the conversation,
+and Mme. Moniche clasped her hands,
+more and more agonized by that word Morgue,
+which, among the people, produces the same terror
+that that other word, which means, however, careful
+attendance, scientific treatment and safety,&mdash;hospital,
+does.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing was now to be done except to question
+some of the neighbors and to take a sketch of the
+salon. Bernardet said to the Magistrate: "My
+photograph will give you that!" While some one
+went out to get a hearse, the Magistrates went
+away, the police officer placed a guard in front of
+the house. The crowd was constantly increasing
+and becoming more and more curious, violently excited
+and eager to see the spectacle&mdash;the murdered
+man borne from his home.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet did not allow M. Ginory to go away
+without asking respectfully if he would be allowed
+to photograph the dead man's eye. Without giving
+him a formal answer, M. Ginory simply told
+him to be present at the autopsy at the Morgue.
+Evidently if the Magistrate had not been already
+full of doubt his reply would have been different.
+Why did that inferior officer have the audacity to
+give his opinion on the subject of conducting a judicial
+investigation? M. Ginory would long before
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;53]</span>
+this have sent him about his business if he had
+not become suddenly interested in him. In his
+quality of Judge he had come to know Bernardet's
+history and his exploits in the service. No more
+capable man, in his line, could be found. He was
+perfectly and utterly devoted to his profession.
+Some strange tales were told of his methods. It
+was he who once passed an entire night on a bench,
+pretending intoxication, in order to gain sufficient
+information to enable him to arrest a murderer in
+the morning in a wretched hovel at La Vilette&mdash;a
+murderer armed to the teeth. It was Bernardet
+who, without arms&mdash;as all those agents&mdash;caught
+the famous bandit, the noted Taureau de la
+Glacière, a foreign Hercules, who had strangled his
+mistress. Bernardet arrested him by holding to
+his temple the cold neck of a bottle and saying,
+"Hands up or I fire!" Now what the bandit took
+for the cold muzzle of a pistol was a vial containing
+some medicine which Bernardet had purchased
+of a pharmacist for his liver.</p>
+
+<p>Deeds of valor against thieves, malefactors and
+insurrectionists abounded in Bernardet's life; and
+M. Ginory had just discovered in this man, whom
+he believed simply endowed with the activity and
+keenness of a hunting dog, an intelligence singularly
+watchful, deep and complicated. Bernardet,
+who had nothing more to do until the body should
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;54]</span>
+be taken to the Morgue, left the house directly
+after the Magistrates.</p>
+
+<p>"Where are you going?" asked Paul Rodier,
+the reporter.</p>
+
+<p>"Home. A few steps from here."</p>
+
+<p>"May I go along with you?" asked the journalist.</p>
+
+<p>"To find an occasion to make me speak? But I
+know nothing! I suspect nothing; I shall say
+nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>"Do you believe that it is the work of a thief, or
+revenge?"</p>
+
+<p>"I am certain that it was no thief. Nothing in
+the apartment was touched. As for the rest, who
+knows?"</p>
+
+<p>"M. Bernardet," laughingly said the reporter,
+as he walked along by the officer's side, "you do
+not wish to speak."</p>
+
+<p>"What good will that do?" Bernardet replied,
+also laughingly; "it will not prevent you from
+publishing an interview."</p>
+
+<p>"You think so. <i>Au revoir!</i> I must hurry and
+make my copy. And you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I? A photograph."</p>
+
+<p>They separated, and Bernardet entered his house.
+His daughters had grieved over his sudden departure
+on Sunday on his fête day. They met him
+with joyous shouts when he appeared, and threw
+themselves upon him. "Papa! Here is papa!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;55]</span>
+Mme. Bernardet was also happy. They could
+go then to the garden and finish the picture. But
+their joy subsided, night had fallen, and Bernardet,
+preoccupied, wished to shut himself up so that he
+might reflect on all that had happened, and perhaps
+to work a little, even to-day.</p>
+
+<p>"It is thy fête day, Bernardet. Wilt thou not
+rest to-day?"</p>
+
+<p>"I can rest at dinner, dear. Until then, I must
+use the time reading over a mass of evidence."</p>
+
+<p>"Then thou wilt need a lamp?" asked Mme.
+Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, my dear; light the lamp."</p>
+
+<p>Next to their bedchamber M. Bernardet had
+fitted up a little room for his private use. It was
+a tiny den, in which was a mahogany table loaded
+with books and papers, and at which he worked
+when he had time, reading, annotating, copying
+from the papers, and collecting extracts for hours
+at a time. No one was allowed to enter this room,
+filled with old papers. Mme. Bernardet well called
+it "a nest of microbes." Bernardet found pleasure
+in this sporadic place, which in Summer was stifling.
+In Winter he worked without a fire.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Bernardet was unhappy as she saw that
+their holiday was spoiled. But she very well knew
+that when her husband was devoured with curiosity,
+carried away by a desire to elucidate a puzzle,
+there was nothing to be said. He listened to no
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;56]</span>
+remonstrances, and the daughters knew that when
+they asked if their father was not coming to renew
+his games with them they were obliged to content
+themselves with the excuse which they knew so
+well from having heard it so often: "Papa is studying
+out a crime!"</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet was anxious to read over his notes,
+the verification of his hopes, of those so-called certainties
+of to-day. That is why he wished to be
+alone. As soon as he had closed the door he at once,
+from among the enormous piles of dust-laden books
+and files of old newspapers, with the unerring instinct
+of the habitual searcher who rummages through
+book stalls, drew forth a gray-covered pamphlet in
+which he had read, with feverish astonishment, the
+experiments and report of Dr. Vernois upon the
+application of photography in criminal researches.
+He quickly seated himself, and with trembling fingers
+eagerly turned over the leaves of the book so
+often read and studied, and came to the report of
+the member of the Academy of Medicine; he compared
+it with the proof submitted by Dr. Bourion,
+of the Medical Society, in which it was stated that
+the most learned savants had seen nothing.</p>
+
+<p>"Seen nothing, or wished to see nothing, perhaps!"
+he murmured.</p>
+
+<p>The light fell upon the photograph which had
+been sent, a long time before, to the Society, and
+Bernardet set himself to study out the old crime with
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;57]</span>
+the most careful attention; with the passion of a
+paleographer deciphering a palimpsest. This poor
+devil of a police officer, in his ardent desire to solve
+the vexing problem, brought to it the same ardor
+and the same faith as a bibliophile. He went over
+and over with the method of an Examining Magistrate
+all that old forgotten affair, and in the solitude
+and silence of his little room the last reflections
+of the setting sun falling on his papers and
+making pale the light of his lamp, he set himself
+the task of solving, like a mathematical problem,
+that question which he had studied, but which he
+wished to know from the very beginning, without
+any doubts, before seeing M. Ginory again at the
+Morgue, beside the body of M. Rovère. He took
+his pamphlet and read: "The photograph sent to
+the Society of Medical Jurisprudence by Dr.
+Bourion taken upon the retina of the eye of a
+woman who had been murdered the 14th of June,
+1868, represents the moment when the assassin,
+after having struck the mother, kills the infant,
+and the dog belonging to the house leaps toward
+the unfortunate little victim to save it."</p>
+
+<p>Then studying, turn by turn, the photograph
+yellowed by time, and the article which described
+it, Bernardet satisfied himself, and learned the history
+by heart.</p>
+
+<p>M. Gallard, General Secretary of the Society,
+after having carefully hidden the back part of the
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;58]</span>
+photograph, had circulated it about among the members
+with this note: "Enigma of Medical Jurisprudence."
+And no one had solved the tragic enigma.
+Even when he had explained, no one could see in
+the photograph what Dr. Bourion saw there. Some
+were able on examining that strange picture to see
+in the black and white haze some figures as singular
+and dissimilar as those which the amiable Polonius
+perceived in the clouds under the suggestion
+of Hamlet.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Vernois, appointed to write a report on Dr.
+Bourion's communication, asked him then how the
+operation had been conducted, and Dr. Bourion had
+given him these details, which Bernardet was now
+reading and studying: The assassination had
+taken place on Sunday between noon and 4 o'clock;
+the extraction of the eyes from their orbits had
+not been made until the following day at 6 o'clock
+in the evening.</p>
+
+<p>The experiment on the eyes, those terribly accusing
+eyes of this dead man, could be made twenty-four
+hours earlier than that other experiment. The
+image&mdash;if there was any image&mdash;ought to be, in
+consequence, more clearly defined than in Dr.
+Bourion's experiment.</p>
+
+<p>"About 6 o'clock in the evening," thought Bernardet,
+"and the photographic light was sufficient."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Bourion had taken pictures of both of the
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;59]</span>
+child's eyes as well as both of the mother's eyes.
+The child's eyes showed nothing but hazy clouds.
+But the mother's eyes were different. Upon the
+left eye, next to a circular section back of the iris,
+a delicately marked image of a dog's head appeared.
+On the same section of the right eye,
+another picture; one could see the assassin raising
+his arm to strike and the dog leaping to protect
+his little charge.</p>
+
+<p>"With much good will, it must be confessed,"
+thought Bernardet, looking again and again at the
+photograph, "and with much imagination, too. But
+it was between fifty and fifty-two hours after the
+murder that the proof was taken, while this time
+it will be while the body is still warm that the experiment
+will be tried."</p>
+
+<p>Seventeen times already had Dr. Vernois experimented
+on animals; sometimes just after he
+had strangled them, again when they had died from
+Prussic acid. He had held in front of their eyes a
+simple object which could be easily recognized. He
+had taken out the eyes and hurried with them to
+the photographer. He had, in order to better expose
+the retina to photographic action, made a sort
+of Maltese cross, by making four incisions on the
+edge of the sclerotic. He removed the vitreous
+humor, fixed it on a piece of card with four pins
+and submitted the retina as quickly as possible to
+the camera.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;60]</span>
+In re-reading the learned man's report, Bernardet
+studied, pored over, carefully scrutinized the text,
+investigated the dozen proofs submitted to the Society
+of Medical Jurisprudence by Dr. Vernois:</p>
+
+<p>Retina of a cat's eye killed by Prussic acid;
+Vernois had held the animal in front of the bars
+of the cage in which it was confined. No result!</p>
+
+<p>Retina of a strangled dog's eye. A watch was
+held in front of its eyes. No result!</p>
+
+<p>Retina of a dog killed by a strangulation. A
+bunch of shining keys was held in front of his eyes.
+No result!</p>
+
+<p>Retina of the eye of a strangled dog. An eyeglass
+held in front of its eyes. Photograph made
+two hours after death. Nothing! In all Dr.
+Vernois's experiments&mdash;nothing! Nothing!</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet repeated the word angrily. Still he
+kept on; he read page after page. But all this
+was twenty-six years ago&mdash;photography has made
+great strides since then. What wonderful results
+have been obtained! The skeleton of the human
+body seen through the flesh! The instantaneous
+photograph! The kinetoscopic views! Man's
+voice registered for eternity in the phonograph!
+The mysterious dragged forth into the light of
+day! Many hitherto unknown secrets become
+common property! The invisible, even the invisible,
+the occult, placed before our eyes, as a
+spectacle!</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;61]</span>
+"One does not know all that may be done with
+a kodak," murmured Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>As he ascertained, in re-reading Dr. Vernois's report
+on "The Application of Photography to
+Medical Jurisprudence," the savant himself, even
+while denying the results of which Dr. Bourion
+spoke in his communication, devoted himself to the
+general consideration upon the rôle which photography
+ought to play in medical jurisprudence.
+Yes, in 1869, he asked that in the researches on
+poisonous substances, where the microscope alone
+had been used, photography should be applied.
+He advocated what in our day is so common, the
+photographing of the features of criminals, their
+deformities, their scars, their tattooings. He demanded
+that pictures should be taken of an accused
+person in many ways, without wigs and with
+them, with and without beards, in diverse costumes.</p>
+
+<p>"These propositions," thought Bernardet, "seem
+hardly new; it is twenty-six years since they were
+discovered, and now they seem as natural as that
+two and two make four. In twenty-six years
+from now, who knows what science will have
+done?</p>
+
+<p>"Vernois demanded that wounds be reproduced,
+their size, the instruments with which the crime
+was committed, the leaves of plants in certain cases
+of poisoning, the shape of the victim's garments,
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;62]</span>
+the prints of their hands and feet, the interior view
+of their rooms, the signature of certain accused
+affected with nervous disorders, parts of bodies and
+of bones, and, in fact, everything in any way connected
+with the crime. It was said that he asked
+too much. Did he expect judges to make photographs?
+To-day, everything that Vernois demanded
+in 1869, has been done, and, in truth, the
+instantaneous photograph has almost superseded
+the minutes of an investigation.</p>
+
+<p>"We photograph a spurious bank note. It is
+magnified, and, by the absence of a tiny dot the
+proof of the alteration is found. On account of
+the lack of a dot the forger is detected. The
+savant, Helmholtz, was the discoverer of this
+method of detecting these faults. Two bank notes,
+one authentic, the other a forgery, were placed
+side by side in a stereoscope of strong magnifying
+power, when the faults were at once detected.
+Helmholtz's experiment probably seemed fantastic
+to the forger condemned by a stereoscope. Oh,
+well, to-day ought not a like experiment on the
+retina of a dead man's eye give a like result?</p>
+
+<p>"Instruments have been highly perfected since
+the time when Dr. Bourion made his experiments,
+and if the law of human physiology has not
+changed the seekers of invisible causes must have
+rapidly advanced in their mysterious pursuits.
+Who knows whether, at the instant of the last
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;63]</span>
+agony, that the dying person does not put all the
+intensity of life into the retina, giving a hundredfold
+power to that last supreme look?"</p>
+
+<p>At this point of his reflections Bernardet experienced
+some hesitation. While he was not thoroughly
+acquainted with physiology and philosophy,
+yet he had seen so much, so many things; had
+known so many strange occurrences, and had
+studied many men. He knew&mdash;for he had closely
+questioned wretches who had been saved from
+drowning at the very last possible moment, some
+of whom had attempted suicide, others who
+had been almost drowned through accident, and
+each one had told him that his whole life, from
+his earliest recollection, had flashed through
+his mind in the instant of mortal agony. Yes,
+a whole lifetime in one instant of cerebral excitement!</p>
+
+<p>Had savants been able to solve this wonderful
+mystery? The <i>resumé</i> of an existence in one vibration!
+Was it possible? Yet&mdash;Bernardet still
+used the word.</p>
+
+<p>And why, in an analogous sensation, could not
+the look of a dying man be seized in an intensity
+lasting an instant, as memory brought in a single
+flash so many diverse remembrances?</p>
+
+<p>"I know, since it is the imagination, and that
+the dead cannot see, while the image on the retina
+is a fact, a fact contradicted by wiser men than I."
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;64]</span>
+Bernardet thought on these mysteries until his
+head began to ache.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall make myself ill over it," he thought.
+"And there is something to be done."</p>
+
+<p>Then in his dusty little room, his brain overexcited,
+he became enthused with one idea. His
+surroundings fell away from him, he saw nothing&mdash;everything
+disappeared&mdash;the books, the papers,
+the walls, the visible objects, as did also the objections,
+the denials, the demonstrative impossibilities.
+And absolute conviction seized him to the exclusion
+of all extraneous surroundings. This conviction
+was absolute, instinctive, irresistible, powerful,
+filling him with entire faith.</p>
+
+<p>"This unknown thing I will find. What is to be
+done I will do," he declared to himself.</p>
+
+<p>He threw the pamphlet on the table, arose from
+his chair and descended to the dining-room, where
+his wife and children were waiting for him. He
+rubbed his hands with glee, and his face looked
+joyous.</p>
+
+<p>"Didst thou discover the trail?" Mme. Bernardet
+asked very simply, as a working woman
+would ask her husband if he had had a good day.
+The eldest of the little girls rushed toward him.</p>
+
+<p>"Papa, my dear little papa!"</p>
+
+<p>"My darling!"</p>
+
+<p>The child asked her father in a sweet voice:
+"Art thou satisfied with thy crime, papa?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;65]</span>
+"We will not talk about that," Bernardet
+replied. "To table! After dinner I will develop
+the pictures which I have taken with my kodak,
+but let us amuse ourselves now; it is my fête day;
+I wish to forget all about business. Let us dine
+now and be as happy as possible."</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;66]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VII.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> murder of M. Rovère, committed in broad
+daylight, in a quarter of Paris filled with life and
+movement, caused a widespread sensation. There
+was so much mystery mixed in the affair. What
+could be ascertained about the dead man's life was
+very dramatically written up by Paul Rodier in a
+sketch, and this, republished everywhere and enlarged
+upon, soon gave to the crime of the Boulevard
+de Clichy the interest of a judicial romance.
+All that there was of vulgar curiosity in man
+awoke, as atavistic bestiality at the smell of blood.</p>
+
+<p>What was this M. Rovère, former Consul to
+Buenos Ayres or Havana, amateur collector of
+objects of virtu, member of the Society of Bibliophiles,
+where he had not been seen for a long time?
+What enemy had entered his room for the purpose
+of cutting his throat? Might he not have been
+assassinated by some thief who knew that his rooms
+contained a collection of works of art? The fête
+at Montmartre was often in full blast in front of the
+house where the murder had been committed, and
+among the crowd of ex-prison birds and malefactors
+who are always attendant upon foreign kirmesses
+might not some one of them have returned and
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;67]</span>
+committed the crime? The papers took advantage
+of the occasion to moralize upon permitting these
+fêtes to be held in the outlying boulevards, where
+vice and crime seemed to spring spontaneously
+from the soil.</p>
+
+<p>But no one, not one journal&mdash;perhaps by order&mdash;spoke
+of that unknown visitor whom Moniche
+called <i>the individual</i>, and whom the portress had
+seen standing beside M. Rovère in front of the
+open safe. Paul Rodier in his sketch scarcely referred
+to the fact that justice had a clew important
+enough to penetrate the mystery of the crime, and
+in the end arrest the murderer. And the readers
+while awaiting developments asked what mystery
+was hidden in this murder. Moniche at times, wore
+a frightened yet important air. He felt that he
+was an object of curiosity to many, the centre of
+prejudices. The porter and his wife possessed a
+terrible secret. They were raised in their own estimation.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall appear at the trial," said Moniche,
+seeing himself already before the red robes, and
+holding up his hand to swear that he would tell the
+truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.</p>
+
+<p>And as they sat together in their little lodge
+they talked the matter over and over, and brought
+up every incident in M. Rovère's life which might
+have a bearing on the case.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you remember the young man who came
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;68]</span>
+one day and insisted on seeing Monsieur le Consul?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Very well, indeed," said Moniche. "I
+had forgotten that one. A felt hat, his face bronzed,
+and a droll accent. He had come from away off
+somewhere. He was probably a Spaniard."</p>
+
+<p>"Some beggar, likely. A poor devil whom the
+Consul had known in America, in the Colonies, one
+knows not where."</p>
+
+<p>"A bad face!" said Moniche. "M. Rovère received
+him, however, and gave him aid, I remember.
+If the young man had come often, I should
+think that he struck the blow. And also, I ought
+to add, if there was not the other."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, but there is the other," his wife replied.
+"There is the one whom I saw standing in front of
+the coupons, and who was looking at those other
+papers with flashing eyes, I give my word. There
+is that one, Moniche, and I am willing to put my
+hand into the fire and yours, too, Moniche, if it is
+not he."</p>
+
+<p>"If he is the one, he will be found."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! but if he has disappeared? One disappears
+very quickly in these days."</p>
+
+<p>"We shall see! we shall see! Justice reigns,
+and we are here!" He said that "we are here!"
+as a grenadier of the guard before an important
+engagement.</p>
+
+<p>They had taken the body to the Morgue. At
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;69]</span>
+the hour fixed for the autopsy Bernardet arrived.
+He seemed much excited, and asked M. Ginory if,
+since their conversation in M. Rovère's library, he
+had reflected and decided to permit him to make
+the experiment&mdash;the famous experiment reported
+for so many years as useless, absurd, almost ridiculous.</p>
+
+<p>"With any one but M. Ginory I should not dare
+to hope," thought the police officer, "but he does
+not sneer at strange discoveries."</p>
+
+<p>He had brought his photographic apparatus, that
+kodak which he declared was more dangerous to
+the criminal than a loaded weapon. He had developed
+the negatives which he had taken, and of the
+three, two had come out in good condition. The
+face of the murdered man appeared with a clearness
+which, in the proofs, rendered it formidable as
+in the reality; and the eyes, those tragic, living
+eyes, retained their terrible, accusing expression
+which the supreme agony had left in them. The
+light had struck full on the eyes&mdash;and they spoke.
+Bernardet showed the proofs to M. Ginory. They
+examined them with a magnifying glass, but they
+showed only the emotion, the agony, the anger of
+that last moment. Bernardet hoped to convince
+M. Ginory that Bourion's experiment was not a
+failure.</p>
+
+<p>Eleven o'clock was the hour named for the autopsy.
+Twenty minutes before, Bernardet was at
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;70]</span>
+the Morgue. He walked restlessly about outside
+among the spectators&mdash;some were women, young
+girls, students, and children who were hovering
+about the place, hoping that some chance would
+permit them to satisfy their morbid curiosity and
+to enter and gaze on those slabs whereon lay&mdash;swollen,
+livid, disfigured&mdash;the bodies.</p>
+
+<p>Never, perhaps, in his life had the police officer
+been so strongly moved with a desire to succeed.
+He brought to his tragic task all the ardor of an
+apostle. It was not the idea of success, the renown,
+or the possibility of advancement which
+urged him on; it was the joy, the glory of aiding
+progress, of attaching his name to a new discovery.
+He worked for art and the love of art. As he
+wandered about, his sole thought was of his desire
+to test Dr. Bourion's experiment; of the realization
+of his dream. "Ah! if M. Ginory will only
+permit it," he thought.</p>
+
+<p>As he formulated that hope in his mind, he saw
+M. Ginory descend from the fiacre; he hurried up
+to him and saluted him respectfully. Seeing Bernardet
+so moved and the first one on the spot, he
+could not repress a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"I see you are still enthused."</p>
+
+<p>"I have thought of nothing else all night, Monsieur
+Ginory."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, but," said Monsieur Ginory in a tone
+which seemed to Bernardet to imply hope, "no idea
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;71]</span>
+must be rejected, and I do not see why we should
+not try the experiment. I have reflected upon it.
+Where is the unsuitableness?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, Monsieur le Juge," cried the agent, "if
+you permit it who knows but that we may revolutionize
+medical jurisprudence?"</p>
+
+<p>"Revolutionize, revolutionize!" Would the Examining
+Magistrate yet find it an idiotic idea?</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory passed around the building and entered
+by a small door opening on the Seine. The
+registrar followed him, and behind him came the
+police agent. Bernardet wished to wait until the
+doctors delegated to perform the autopsy should
+arrive, and the head keeper of the Morgue advised
+him to possess himself with patience, and while he
+was waiting to look around and see the latest
+cadavers which had been brought there.</p>
+
+<p>"We have had, in eight days, a larger number
+of women than men, which is rare. And these
+women were nearly all habitués of the public balls
+and race tracks."</p>
+
+<p>"And how can you tell that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Because they have pretty feet."</p>
+
+<p>Professor Morin arrived with a confrère, a young
+Pasteurian doctor, with a singular mind, broad and
+receptive, and who passed among his companions
+for a man fond of chimeras, a little retiring, however,
+and giving over to making experiments and
+to vague dreams. Monsieur Morin saluted M.
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;72]</span>
+Ginory and presented to him the young doctor,
+Erwin by name, and said to the Magistrate that
+the house students had probably begun the autopsy
+to gain time.</p>
+
+<p>The body, stripped of its clothing, lay upon the
+dissecting table, and three young men, in velvet
+skull caps, with aprons tied about their waists,
+were standing about the corpse; they had already
+begun the autopsy. The mortal wound looked
+redder than ever in the whiteness of the naked
+body.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet glided into the room, trying to keep
+out of sight, listening and looking, and, above
+everything, not losing sight of M. Ginory's face.
+A face in which the look was keen, penetrating,
+sharp as a knife, as he bent over the pale face of
+the murdered man, regarding it as searchingly as
+the surgeons' scalpels were searching the wound
+and the flesh. Among those men in their black
+clothes, some with bared heads, in order to work
+better; others with hats on, the stretched-out
+corpse seemed like a wax figure upon a marble slab.
+Bernardet thought of those images which he had
+seen copied from Rembrandt's pictures&mdash;the poet
+with the anatomical pincers and the shambles.
+The surgeons bent over the body, their hands busy
+and their scissors cutting the muscles. That
+wound, which had let out his life, that large wound,
+like a monstrous and grimacing mouth, they enlarged
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;73]</span>
+still more; the head oscillated from side to
+side, and they were obliged to prop it with some
+mats. The eyes remained the same, and, in spite
+of the hours which had passed, seemed as living,
+as menacing and eloquent as the night before;
+they were, however, veiled with something vitreous
+over the pupils, like the amaurosis of death, yet
+full of that anger, of that fright, or that ferocious
+malediction which was reproduced in a startling
+manner in the negatives taken by Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>"The secret of the crime is in that look,"
+thought the police agent. "Those eyes see, those
+eyes speak; they tell what they know, they accuse
+some one."</p>
+
+<p>Then, while the professor, his associates and his
+students went on with the autopsy, exchanging observations,
+following in the mutilated body, their
+researches for the truth, trying to be very accurate
+as to the nature of the wound, the form even of the
+knife with which it was made, Bernardet softly
+approached the Examining Magistrate and in a low
+tone, timidly, respectfully, he spoke some words,
+which were insistent, however, and pressing, urging
+the Magistrate to quickly interfere.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Monsieur le Juge, this is the moment;
+you who can do everything"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The Examining Magistrate has, with us, absolute
+power. He does whatever seems to him best.
+And he wishes to do a thing, because he wishes to
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;74]</span>
+do it. M. Ginory, curious by nature and because
+it was his duty, hesitated, scratched his ear, rubbed
+his nose, bit his lips, listened to the supplicating
+murmur of the police officer; but decided not to
+speak just then, and continued gazing with a fixed
+stare at the dead man.</p>
+
+<p>This thought came to him, moreover, insistent
+and imperious, that he was there to testify in all
+things in favor of that truth, the discovery of which
+imposed upon him&mdash;and suddenly, his sharp voice
+interrupted the surgeon's work.</p>
+
+<p>"Messieurs, does not the expression of the open
+eyes strike you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; they express admirably the most perfect
+agony," M. Morin replied.</p>
+
+<p>"And does it not seem," asked the Examining
+Magistrate, "as if they were fixed with that expression
+on the murderer?"</p>
+
+<p>"Without doubt! The mouth seems to curse
+and the eyes to menace."</p>
+
+<p>"And what if the last image seen, in fact, that
+of the murderer, still remains upon the retina of
+the eyes?"</p>
+
+<p>M. Morin looked at the Magistrate in astonishment,
+his air was slightly mocking and the lips and
+eyes assumed a quizzical expression. But Bernardet
+was very much surprised when he heard one
+remark. Dr. Erwin raised his head and while he
+seemed to approve of that which M. Ginory had
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;75]</span>
+advanced, he said: "That image must have disappeared
+from the retina some time ago."</p>
+
+<p>"Who knows?" said M. Ginory.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet experienced a profound emotion. He
+felt that this time the problem would be officially
+settled. M. Ginory had not feared ridicule when he
+spoke, and a discussion arose there, in that dissecting
+room, in the presence of the corpse. What had existed
+only in a dream, in Bernardet's little study, became
+here, in the presence of the Examining Magistrate,
+a member of the Institute, and the young students,
+almost full fledged doctors, a question frankly
+discussed in all its bearings. And it was he, standing
+back, he, a poor devil of a police officer, who
+had urged this Examining Magistrate to question
+this savant.</p>
+
+<p>"At the back of the eyes," said the Professor,
+touching the eyes with his scalpel, "there is nothing,
+believe me. It is elsewhere that you must
+look for your proof."</p>
+
+<p>"But"&mdash;and M. Ginory repeated his "Who
+knows?"&mdash;"What if we try it this time; will it
+inconvenience you, my dear Master?" M. Morin
+made a movement with his lips which meant <i>peuh!</i>
+and his whole countenance expressed his scorn.
+"But, I see no inconvenience." At the end of a
+moment he said in a sharp tone: "It will be lost
+time."</p>
+
+<p>"A little more, a little less," replied M. Ginory,
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;76]</span>
+"the experiment is worth the trouble to make
+it."</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory had proved without doubt that he,
+like Bernardet, wished to satisfy his curiosity, and
+in looking at the open eyes of the corpse, although
+in his duties he never allowed himself to be influenced
+by the sentimental or the dramatic, yet it
+seemed to him that those eyes urged him to insist,
+nay, even supplicated him.</p>
+
+<p>"I know, I know," said M. Morin, "what you
+dream of in your magistrate's brain is as amusing
+as a tale of Edgar Poe's. But to find in those eyes
+the image of the murderer&mdash;come now, leave that
+to the inventive genius of a Rudyard Kipling, but
+do not mix the impossible with our researches in
+medical jurisprudence. Let us not make romance;
+let us make, you the examinations and I the dissection."</p>
+
+<p>The short tone in which the Professor had
+spoken did not exactly please M. Ginory, who now,
+a little through self-conceit (since he had made the
+proposition), a little through curiosity, decided
+that he would not beat a retreat. "Is there anything
+to risk?" he asked. "And it might be one
+chance in a thousand."</p>
+
+<p>"But there is no chance," quickly answered M.
+Morin. "None&mdash;none!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, relenting a little, he entered the discussion,
+explaining why he had no faith.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;77]</span>
+"It is not I, M. Ginory, who will deny the possibility
+of such a result. But it would be miraculous.
+Do you believe in miracles, the impressions of heat,
+of the blood, of light, on our tissues are not catalogueable,
+if I may be allowed the expression. The
+impression on the retina is produced by the refraction
+which is called ethereal, phosphorescent, and
+which is almost as difficult to seize as to weigh the
+imponderable. To think to find on the retina a
+luminous impression after a certain number of
+hours and days would be, as Vernois has very well
+said, to think one can find in the organs of hearing
+the last sound which reverberated through them.
+<i>Peuh!</i> Seize the air-bubble at the end of a tube
+and place it in a museum as a curiosity. Is there
+anything left of it but a drop of water which is
+burst, while of the fleeting vision or the passing
+sound nothing remains."</p>
+
+<p>The unfortunate Bernardet suffered keenly when
+he heard this. He wished to answer. The words
+came to his lips. Ah! if he was only in M.
+Ginory's place. The latter, with bowed head, listened
+and seemed to weigh each word as it dropped
+from M. Morin's lips.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us reason it, but," the Professor went on,
+"since the ophthalmoscope does not show to the
+oculist on the retina, any of the objects or beings
+which a sick man sees&mdash;you understand, not one of
+them&mdash;how can you think that photography can
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;78]</span>
+find that object or being on the retina of a dead
+man's eye?"</p>
+
+<p>He waited for objections from the Examining
+Magistrate and Bernardet hoped that M. Ginory
+would combat some of the Professor's arguments.
+He had only to say: "What of it? Let us see!
+Let us experiment!" And Bernardet had longed
+for just these words from him; but the Magistrate
+remained silent, his head still bent. The police
+agent felt, with despair, his chance slipping, slipping
+away from him, and that never, never again
+would he find a like opportunity to test the experiment.
+Suddenly, the strident tones of Dr. Erwin's
+voice rung out sharply, like an electric bell, and
+Bernardet experienced a sensation like that of a
+sudden unexpected illumination.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Master," he respectfully began, "I
+saw at home in Denmark, a poor devil, picked up
+dying, half devoured by a wolf; and who, when
+taken from the very jaws of the beast, still retained
+in the eye a very visible image in which one
+could see the nose and teeth of the brute. A
+vision! Imagination, perhaps! But the fact struck
+me at the time and we made a note of it."</p>
+
+<p>"And?" questioned M. Morin, in a tone of
+raillery.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet cocked his ears as a dog does when he
+hears an unusual sound. M. Ginory looked at this
+slender young man with his long blond hair, his
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;79]</span>
+eyes as blue as the waters of a lake, his face pale
+and wearing the peculiar look common to searchers
+after the mysterious. The students and the others
+gathered about their master, remained motionless
+and listened intently as to a lecture.</p>
+
+<p>"And," Dr. Erwin went on frigidly, "if we had
+found absolutely nothing we would, at least, have
+kept silent about an unsuccessful research, it is
+useless to say. Think, then, my dear Master, the
+exterior objects must have imprinted themselves
+on the retina, did they not? reduced in size, according
+to the size of the place wherein they were
+reflected; they appeared there, they certainly appeared
+there! There is&mdash;I beg your pardon for
+referring to it, but it is to these others (and Dr.
+Erwin designated M. Ginory, his registrar, and
+Bernardet)&mdash;there is in the retina a substance of a
+red color, the <i>pourpre retinien</i>, very sensitive to
+the light. Upon the deep red of this membrane
+objects are seen white. And one can fix the image.
+M. Edmond Perrier, professor in the Museum of
+Natural History, reports (you know it better than I,
+my dear Master), in a work on animal anatomy and
+physiology which our students are all familiar
+with, that he made an experiment. After removing
+a rabbit's eye, a living rabbit's eye&mdash;yes,
+science is cruel&mdash;he placed it in a dark room, so
+that he could obtain upon the retina the image of
+some object, a window for instance, and plunged it
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;80]</span>
+immediately into a solution of alum and prevented
+the decomposition of the <i>pourpre retinien</i>, and the
+window could plainly be seen, fixed on the eye. In
+that black chamber which we have under our eyebrows,
+in the orbit, is a storehouse, a storehouse of
+images which are retained, like the image which
+the old Dane's eye held of the wolf's nose and
+teeth. And who knows? Perhaps it is possible
+to ask of a dead man's eye the secret of what it
+saw when living."</p>
+
+<p>This was, put in more scientific terms by the
+young Danish doctor, the substance of what Bernardet
+believed possible. The young men had listened
+with the attractive sympathy, which is displayed
+when anything novel is explained. Rigid,
+upon the marble slab, the victim seemed to wait
+for the result of the discussion, deaf to all the confused
+sounds about him; his eye fixed upon the
+infinite, upon the unknowable which he now knew.</p>
+
+<p>It was, however, this insensible body which had
+caused the discussion of what was an enigma to
+savants. What was the secret of his end? The
+last word of his agony? Who made that wound
+which had ended his life? And like a statue lying
+on its stone couch, the murdered man seemed to
+wait. What they knew not, he knew. What they
+wished to know, he still knew, perhaps! This
+doubt alone, rooted deep in M. Ginory's mind, was
+enough to urge him to have the experiment tried,
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;81]</span>
+and, excusing himself for his infatuation, he begged
+M. Morin to grant permission to try the experiment,
+which some of the doctors had thought would
+be successful.</p>
+
+<p>"We shall be relieved even if we do not succeed,
+and we can but add our defeat to the others."</p>
+
+<p>M. Morin's face still bore its sceptical smile.
+But after all, the Examining Magistrate was master
+of the situation, and since young Dr. Erwin
+brought the result of the Denmark experiment&mdash;a
+contribution new in these researches&mdash;to add
+weight to the matter, the Professor requested that
+he should not be asked to lend himself to an
+experiment which he declared in advance would be a
+perfectly useless one.</p>
+
+<p>There was a photographic apparatus at the
+Morgue as at the Préfecture, used for anthropometry.
+Bernardet, moreover, had his kodak in his hand.
+One could photograph the retina as soon as the
+membrane was separated from the eye by the
+autopsy, and when, like the wing of a butterfly, it
+had been fastened to a piece of cork. And while
+Bernardet was accustomed to all the horrors of
+crime, yet he felt his heart beat almost to suffocation
+during this operation. He noticed that M.
+Ginory became very pale, and that he bit his lips,
+casting occasional pitying glances toward the
+dead man. On the contrary, the young men bent
+over the body and studied it with the admiration
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;82]</span>
+and joy of treasure seekers digging in a mine.
+Each human fibre seemed to reveal to them some
+new truth. They were like jewelers before a casket
+full of gems, and what they studied, weighed, examined,
+was a human corpse. And when those
+eyes, living, terrible, accusing, were removed, leaving
+behind them two empty orbits, the Professor
+suddenly spoke with marvelous eloquence, flowing
+and picturesque, as if he were speaking of works
+of art. And it was, in truth, a work of art, this
+wonderful mechanism which he explained to his
+students, who listened eagerly to each word. It
+was a work of art, this eye, with its sclerotic, its
+transparent cornea, its aqueous and vitreous humor,
+its crystalline lens, and the retina, like a
+photographic plate in that black chamber in which
+the luminous rays reflect, reversed, the objects seen.
+And M. Morin, holding between his fingers the object
+which he was demonstrating, spoke of the
+membrane formed of fibres and of the terminal
+elements of the optic nerve, as a professor of painting
+or of sculpture speaks of a gem chased by a
+Benvenuto.</p>
+
+<p>"The human body is a marvel," cried M. Morin,
+"a marvel, Messieurs," and he held forth for
+several minutes upon the wonderful construction
+of this marvel. His enthusiasm was shared, moreover,
+by the young men and Dr. Erwin, who
+listened intently. Bernardet, ignorant and respectful,
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;83]</span>
+felt troubled in the presence of this renowned
+physiologist, and congratulated himself that it
+was he who had insisted on this experiment and
+caused a member of the Institute to hold forth
+thus. As for M. Ginory, he left the room a moment,
+feeling the need of air. The operation,
+which the surgeons prolonged with joy, made him
+ill, and he felt very faint. He quickly recovered,
+however, and returned to the dissecting room, so
+as not to lose any of the explanation which M.
+Morin was giving as he stood with the eye in his
+hand. And in that eye an image remained, perhaps.
+He was anxious to search for it, to find it.</p>
+
+<p>"I will take it upon myself," Bernardet said.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;84]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER VIII.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">The</span> police officer did not follow the autopsical
+operations closely. He was eager to know&mdash;he
+was impatient for the moment when, having taken
+the picture, he might develop the negatives and
+study them to see if he could discover anything,
+could decipher any image. He had used photography
+in the service of anthropometry; he had taken
+the pictures at the Morgue with his kodak, and
+now, at home in his little room, which he was able
+to darken completely, he was developing his plates.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Bernardet and the children were much
+struck with the expression of his face. It was
+not troubled, but preoccupied and as if he were
+completely absorbed. He was very quiet, eating
+very little, and seemed thoughtful. His wife asked
+him, "Art thou ill?" He responded, "No, I think
+not." And his little girls said to each other in
+low tones, "Papa is on a trail!"</p>
+
+<p>He was, in truth! The hunting dog smelled the
+scent! The pictures which he had taken of the
+retina and had developed showed a result sufficiently
+clear for Bernardet to feel confident enough
+to tell his chief that he distinctly saw a visage, the
+face of a man, confused, no doubt, but clear enough
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;85]</span>
+to recognize not only a type, but a distinct type.
+As from the depths of a cloud, in a sort of white
+halo, a human face appeared whose features could
+be distinctly seen with a magnifying glass! The
+face of a man with a pointed black beard, the forehead
+a little bald, and blackish spots which indicated
+the eyes. It was only a phantom, evidently,
+and the photographer at the Préfecture seemed
+more moved than Bernardet by the proofs obtained.
+Clearer than in spirit photographs, which
+so many credulous people believe in, the image
+showed plainly, and in studying it one could distinctly
+follow the contours. A spectre, perhaps,
+but the spectre of a man who was still young and
+resembled, with his pointed beard, some trooper of
+the sixteenth century, a phantom of some Seigneur
+Clouet.</p>
+
+<p>"For example," said the official photographer,
+"if one could discover a murderer by photographing
+a dead man's eyes, this would be miraculous.
+It is incredible!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not more incredible," Bernardet replied, "than
+what the papers publish: Edison is experimenting
+on making the blind see by using the Roentgen
+Rays. There is a miracle!"</p>
+
+<p>Then Bernardet took his proofs to M. Ginory.
+The police officer felt that the magistrate, the sovereign
+power in criminal researches, ought, above
+everything, to collaborate with him, to consent to
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;86]</span>
+these experiments which so many others had declared
+useless and absurd. The taste for researches,
+which was with M. Ginory a matter of temperament
+as well as a duty to his profession, was, fortunately,
+keen on this scent. Criminals call in
+their argot, the judges, "the pryers." Curiosity
+in this man was combined with a knowledge of
+profound researches.</p>
+
+<p>When Bernardet spread out on M. Ginory's desk
+the four photographs which he had brought with
+him, the first remark which the examining Magistrate
+made was: "But I see nothing&mdash;a cloud, a
+mist, and then after?" Bernardet drew a magnifying
+glass from his pocket and pointed out as he
+would have explained an enigmatical design, the
+lineaments, moving his finger over the contour of
+the face which his nail outlined, that human face
+which he had seen and studied in his little room in
+the passage of the Elysée des Beaux-Arts. He
+made him see&mdash;after some moments of minute examination&mdash;he
+made him see that face. "It is
+true&mdash;there is an image there," exclaimed M.
+Ginory. He added: "Is it plain enough for me to
+see it so that I can from it imagine a living being?
+I see the form, divined it at first, saw it clearly defined
+afterward. At first it seemed very vague,
+but I find it sufficiently well defined so that I can
+see each feature, but without any special character.
+Oh!" continued M. Ginory, excitedly, rubbing
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;87]</span>
+his plump little hands, "if it was only possible,
+if it was only possible! What a marvel!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is possible, Monsieur le Juge! have faith,"
+Bernardet replied. "I swear to you that it is
+possible." This enthusiasm gained over the Examining
+Magistrate. Bernardet had found a fellow-sympathizer
+in his fantastic ideas. M. Ginory
+was now&mdash;if only to try the experiment&mdash;resolved
+to direct the investigation on this plan. He was
+anxious to first show the proofs to those who would
+be apt to recognize in them a person whom they
+might have once seen in the flesh. "To Moniche
+first and then to his wife," said Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is Moniche?"</p>
+
+<p>"The concierge in the Boulevard de Clichy."</p>
+
+<p>Ordered to come to the court, M. and Mme.
+Moniche were overjoyed. They were summoned
+to appear before the Judges. They had become
+important personages. Perhaps their pictures
+would be published in the papers. They dressed
+themselves as for a fête. Mme. Moniche in her
+Sunday best strove to do honor to M. Rovère. She
+said to Moniche in all sincerity: "Our duty is to
+avenge him."</p>
+
+<p>While sitting on a bench in one of the long, cold
+corridors, the porter and his wife saw pass before
+them prisoners led by their jailers; some looked
+menacing, while others had a cringing air and
+seemed to try to escape notice. These two persons
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;88]</span>
+felt that they were playing rôles as important as
+those in a melodrama at the Ambigu. The time
+seemed long to them, and M. Ginory did not call
+them as soon as they wished that he would. They
+thought of their home, which, while they were detained
+there, would be invaded by the curious, the
+gossips and reporters.</p>
+
+<p>"How slow these Judges are," growled Moniche.</p>
+
+<p>When he was conducted into the presence of M.
+Ginory and his registrar, and seated upon a chair,
+he was much confused and less bitter. He felt a
+vague terror of all the paraphernalia of justice
+which surrounded him. He felt that he was running
+some great danger, and to the Judge's questions
+he replied with extreme prudence. Thanks
+to him and his wife M. Ginory found out a great
+deal about M. Rovère's private life; he penetrated
+into that apparently hidden existence, he searched
+to see if he could discover, among the people who
+had visited the old ex-Consul the one among all
+others who might have committed the deed.</p>
+
+<p>"You never saw the woman who visited Rovère?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. The veiled lady. The Woman in Black.
+But I do not know her. No one knew her."</p>
+
+<p>The story told by the portress about the time
+when she surprised the stranger and Rovère with
+the papers in his hand in front of the open safe
+made quite an impression on the Examining Magistrate.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;89]</span>
+"Do you know the name of the visitor?"</p>
+
+<p>"No, Monsieur," the portress replied.</p>
+
+<p>"But if you should see him again would you
+recognize him?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly! I see his face there, before me!"</p>
+
+<p>She made haste to return to her home so that
+she might relate her impressions to her fellow gossips.
+The worthy couple left the court puffed up
+with self-esteem because of the rôle which they had
+been called upon to play. The obsequies were to
+be held the next day, and the prospect of a dramatic
+day in which M. and Mme. Moniche would
+still play this important rôle, created in them an
+agony which was almost joyous. The crowd
+around the house of the crime was always large.
+Some few passers-by stopped&mdash;stopped before the
+stone façade behind which a murder had been committed.
+The reporters returned again and again
+for news, and the couple, greedy for glory, could not
+open a paper without seeing their names printed in
+large letters. One journal had that morning even
+published an especial article: "Interviews with M.
+and Mme. Moniche."</p>
+
+<p>The crowd buzzed about the lodge like a swarm
+of flies. M. Rovère's body had been brought back
+from the Morgue. The obsequies would naturally
+attract an enormous crowd; all the more, as the
+mystery was still as deep as ever. Among his
+papers had been found a receipt for a tomb in the
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;90]</span>
+cemetery at Montmartre, bought by him about a
+year before. In another paper, not dated, were
+found directions as to how his funeral was to be
+conducted. M. Rovère, after having passed a wandering
+life, wished to rest in his native country.
+But no other indications of his wishes, nothing
+about his relatives, had been found. It seemed as
+if he was a man without a family, without any
+place in society, or any claim on any one to bury
+him. And this distressing isolation added to the
+morbid curiosity which was attached to the house,
+now all draped in black, with the letter "R" standing
+out in white against its silver escutcheon.</p>
+
+<p>Who would be chief mourner? M. Rovère had
+appointed no one. He had asked in that paper
+that a short notice should be inserted in the paper
+giving the hour and date of the services, and giving
+him the simple title ex-Consul. "I hope," went
+on the writer, "to be taken to the cemetery quietly
+and followed by intimate friends, if any remain."</p>
+
+<p>Intimate friends were scarce in that crowd, without
+doubt, but the dead man's wish could hardly
+be carried out. Those obsequies which he had
+wished to be quiet became a sort of fête, funereal
+and noisy; where the thousands of people crowding
+the Boulevard crushed each other in their desire
+to see, and pressed almost upon the draped
+funeral car which the neighbors had covered with
+flowers.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;91]</span>
+Everything is a spectacle for Parisians. The
+guardians of the peace strove to keep back the
+crowds; some gamins climbed into the branches of
+the trees. The bier had been placed at the foot of
+the staircase in the narrow corridor opening upon
+the street. Mme. Moniche had placed upon a table
+in the lodge some loose leaves, where Rovère's unknown
+friends could write their names.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet, alert, with his eyes wide open, studying
+the faces, searching the eyes, mingled with the
+crowd, looked at the file of people, scrutinized, one
+by one, the signatures; Bernardet, in mourning,
+wearing black gloves, seemed more like an undertaker's
+assistant than a police spy. Once he found
+himself directly in front of the open door of the lodge
+and the table where the leaves lay covered with
+signatures; when in the half light of the corridor
+draped with black, where the bier lay, he saw a
+man of about fifty, pale and very sad looking. He
+had arrived, in his turn in the line, at the table,
+where he signed his name. Mme. Moniche,
+clothed in black, with a white handkerchief in her
+hand, although she was not weeping, found herself
+side by side with Bernardet; in fact, their elbows
+touched. When the man reached the table, coming
+from the semi-darkness of the passage, and stepped
+into the light which fell full on him from the window,
+the portress involuntarily exclaimed, "Ah!"
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;92]</span>
+She was evidently much excited, and caught the
+police officer by the hand and said:</p>
+
+<p>"I am afraid!"</p>
+
+<p>She spoke in such a low tone that Bernardet
+divined rather than heard what she meant in that
+stifled cry. He looked at her from the corner of
+his eye. He saw that she was ghastly, and again
+she spoke in a low tone: "He! he whom I saw
+with M. Rovère before the open safe!"</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet gave the man one sweeping glance of
+the eye. He fairly pierced him through with his
+sharp look. The unknown, half bent over the
+table whereon lay the papers, showed a wide forehead,
+slightly bald, and a pointed beard, a little
+gray, which almost touched the white paper as he
+wrote his name.</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the police officer experienced a strange
+sensation; it seemed to him that this face, the
+shape of the head, the pointed beard, he had recently
+seen somewhere, and that this human
+silhouette recalled to him an image which he had
+recently studied. The perception of a possibility
+of a proof gave him a shock. This man who was
+there made him think suddenly of that phantom
+discernible in the photographs taken of the retina
+of the murdered man's eye.</p>
+
+<p>"Who is that man?"</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet shivered with pleasurable excitement,
+and, insisting upon his own impression that this
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;93]</span>
+unknown strongly recalled the image obtained, and
+mentally he compared this living man, bending over
+the table, writing his name, with that spectre
+which had the air of a trooper which appeared in
+the photograph. The contour was the same, not
+only of the face, but the beard. This man reminded
+one of a Seigneur of the time of Henry III., and
+Bernardet found in that face something formidable.
+The man had signed his name. He raised his head,
+and his face, of a dull white, was turned full toward
+the police officer; their looks crossed, keen
+on Bernardet's side, veiled in the unknown. But
+before the fixity of the officer's gaze the strange
+man dropped his head for a moment; then, in his
+turn, he fixed a piercing, almost menacing, gaze on
+Bernardet. Then the latter slowly dropped his
+eyes and bowed; the unknown went out quickly
+and was lost in the crowd before the house.</p>
+
+<p>"It is he! it is he!" repeated the portress, who
+trembled as if she had seen a ghost.</p>
+
+<p>Scarcely had the unknown disappeared than the
+police officer took but two steps to reach the table,
+and bending over it in his turn, he read the name
+written by that man:</p>
+
+<p>"Jacques Dantin."</p>
+
+<p>The name awakened no remembrance in Bernardet's
+mind, and now it was a living problem
+that he had to solve.</p>
+
+<p>"Tell no one that you have seen that man," he
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;94]</span>
+hastily said to Mme. Moniche. "No one! Do you
+hear?" And he hurried out into the Boulevard,
+picking his way through the crowd and watching
+out to find that Jacques Dantin, whom he wished
+to follow.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;95]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER IX.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Jacques Dantin</span>, moreover, was not difficult to
+find in the crowd. He stood near the funeral car;
+his air was very sad. Bernardet had a fine opportunity
+to examine him at his ease. He was an
+elegant looking man, slender, with a resolute air,
+and frowning eyebrows which gave his face a very
+energetic look. His head bared to the cold wind,
+he stood like a statue while the bearers placed the
+casket in the funeral car, and Bernardet noticed
+the shaking of the head&mdash;a distressed shaking.
+The longer the police officer looked at him, studied
+him, the stronger grew the resemblance to the
+image in the photograph. Bernardet would soon
+know who this Jacques Dantin was, and even at
+this moment he asked a question or two of some
+of the assistants.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know who that gentleman is standing
+near the hearse?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know what Jacques Dantin does?
+Was he one of M. Rovère's intimate friends?"</p>
+
+<p>"Jacques Dantin?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; see, there, with the pointed beard."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;96]</span>
+"I do not know him."</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet thought that if he addressed the
+question to M. Dantin himself he might learn all
+he wished to know at once, and he approached him
+at the moment the procession started, and walked
+along with him almost to the cemetery, striving to
+enter into conversation with him. He spoke of
+the dead man, sadly lamenting M. Rovère's sad
+fate. But he found his neighbor very silent. Upon
+the sidewalk of the Boulevard the dense crowd
+stood in respectful silence and uncovered as the
+cortège passed, and the officer noticed that some
+loose petals from the flowers dropped upon the
+roadway.</p>
+
+<p>"There are a great many flowers," he remarked
+to his neighbor. "It is rather surprising, as M.
+Rovère seemed to have so few friends."</p>
+
+<p>"He has had many," the man brusquely remarked.
+His voice was hoarse, and quivered with
+emotion. Bernardet saw that he was strongly
+moved. Was it sorrow? Was it bitterness of
+spirit? Remorse, perhaps! The man did not
+seem, moreover, in a very softened mood. He
+walked along with his eyes upon the funeral car,
+his head uncovered in spite of the cold, and seemed
+to be in deep thought. The police officer studied
+him from a corner of his eye. His wrinkled face
+was intelligent, and bore an expression of weariness,
+but there was something hard about the set
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;97]</span>
+of the mouth and insolent in the turned-up end of
+his mustache.</p>
+
+<p>As they approached the cemetery at Montmartre&mdash;the
+journey was not a long one in which to make
+conversation&mdash;Bernardet ventured a decisive question:
+"Did you know M. Rovère very well?"</p>
+
+<p>The other replied: "Very well."</p>
+
+<p>"And whom do you think could have had any
+interest in this matter?" The question was brusque
+and cut like a knife. Jacques Dantin hesitated in
+his reply, looking keenly as they walked along at
+this little man with his smiling aspect, whose name
+he did not know and who had questioned him.</p>
+
+<p>"It is because I have a great interest in at once
+commencing my researches," said Bernardet, measuring
+his words in order to note the effect which
+they would produce on this unknown man. "I am
+a police detective."</p>
+
+<p>Oh! This time Bernardet saw Dantin shiver.
+There was no doubt of it; this close contact with a
+police officer troubled him, and he turned pale and
+a quick spasm passed over his face. His anxious
+eyes searched Bernardet's face, but, content with
+stealing an occasional glance of examination toward
+his neighbor, the little man walked along with
+eyes cast toward the ground. He studied Jacques
+Dantin in sudden, quick turns of the eye.</p>
+
+<p>The car advanced slowly, turned the corner of
+the Boulevard and passed into the narrow avenue
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;98]</span>
+which led to God's Acre. The arch of the iron
+bridge led to the Campo-Santo like a viaduct of
+living beings, over to the Land of Sleep, for it was
+packed with a curious crowd; it was a scene for a
+melodrama, the cortège and the funeral car covered
+with wreaths. Bernardet, still walking by Dantin's
+side, continued to question him. The agent noticed
+that these questions seemed to embarrass M.
+Rovère's pretended friend.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it a long time since M. Rovère and Jacques
+Dantin have known each other?"</p>
+
+<p>"We have been friends since childhood."</p>
+
+<p>"And did you see him often?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. Life had separated us."</p>
+
+<p>"Had you seen him recently? Mme. Moniche
+said that you had."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is Mme. Moniche?"</p>
+
+<p>"The concierge of the house, and a sort of housekeeper
+for M. Rovère."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Yes!" said Jacques Dantin, as if he had
+just remembered some forgotten sight. Bernardet,
+by instinct, read this man's thoughts; saw again
+with him also the tragic scene when the portress,
+suddenly entering M. Rovère's apartments, had
+seen him standing, face to face with Dantin, in
+front of the open safe, with a great quantity of
+papers spread out.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you believe that he had many enemies?"
+asked the police agent, with deliberate calculation.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;99]</span>
+"No," Dantin sharply replied, without hesitation.
+Bernardet waited a moment, then in a firm
+voice he said: "M. Ginory will no doubt count a
+good deal on you in order to bring about the arrest
+of the assassin."</p>
+
+<p>"M. Ginory?"</p>
+
+<p>"The Examining Magistrate."</p>
+
+<p>"Then he will have to make haste with his investigation,"
+Jacques Dantin replied. "I shall
+soon be obliged to leave Paris." This reply
+astonished Bernardet. This departure, of which
+the motive was probably a simple one, seemed to
+him strange under the tragic circumstances. M.
+Dantin, moreover, did not hesitate to give him,
+without his asking for it, his address, adding that
+he would hold himself in readiness from his return
+from the cemetery at the disposition of the Examining
+Magistrate.</p>
+
+<p>"The misfortune is that I can tell nothing, as
+I know nothing. I do not even suspect who
+could have any interest in killing that unfortunate
+man. A professional criminal, without
+doubt."</p>
+
+<p>"I do not believe so."</p>
+
+<p>The cortège had now reached one of the side
+avenues; a white fog enveloped everything, and
+the marble tombs shone ghostly through it. The
+spot chosen by M. Rovère himself was at the end
+of the Avenue de la Cloche. The car slowly rolled
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;100]</span>
+toward the open grave. Mme. Moniche, overcome
+with grief, staggered as she walked along, but her
+husband, the tailor, seemed to be equal to the occasion
+and his rôle. They both assumed different expressions
+behind their dead. And Paul Rodier
+walked along just in front of them, note book in
+hand. Bernardet promised himself to keep close
+watch of Dantin and see in what manner he carried
+himself at the tomb. A pressure of the crowd separated
+them for a moment, but the officer was perfectly
+satisfied. Standing on the other side of the
+grave, face to face with him, was Dantin; a row of
+the most curious had pushed in ahead of Bernardet,
+but in this way he could better see Dantin's face,
+and not miss the quiver of a muscle. He stood on
+tiptoe and peered this way and that, between the
+heads, and could thus scrutinize and analyze, without
+being perceived himself.</p>
+
+<p>Dantin was standing on the very edge of the
+grave. He held himself very upright, in a tense,
+almost aggressive way, and looked, from time to
+time, into the grave with an expression of anger
+and almost defiance. Of what was he thinking?
+In that attitude, which seemed to be a revolt
+against the destiny which had come to his friend,
+Bernardet read a kind of hardening of the will
+against an emotion which might become excessive
+and telltale. He was not, as yet, persuaded of the
+guiltiness of this man, but he did not find in that
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;101]</span>
+expression of defiance the tenderness which ought
+to be shown for a friend&mdash;a lifelong friend, as
+Dantin had said that Rovère was. And then the
+more he examined him&mdash;there, for example, seeing
+his dark silhouette clearly defined in front of the
+dense white of a neighboring column&mdash;the more the
+aspect of this man corresponded with that of the
+vision transfixed in the dead man's eye. Yes, it
+was the same profile of a trooper, his hand upon his
+hip, as if resting upon a rapier. Bernardet blinked
+his eyes in order to better see that man. He perceived
+a man who strongly recalled the vague form
+found in that retina, and his conviction came to the
+aid of his instinct, gradually increased, and became,
+little by little, invincible, irresistible. He repeated
+the address which this man had given him: "Jacques
+Dantin, Rue de Richelieu, 114." He would
+make haste to give that name to M. Ginory, and
+have a citation served upon him. Why should
+this Dantin leave Paris? What was his manner of
+living? his means of existence? What were the
+passions, the vices, of the man standing there with
+the austere mien of a Huguenot, in front of the
+open grave?</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet saw that, despite his strong will and
+his wish to stand there impassive, Jacques Dantin
+was troubled when, with a heavy sound, the casket
+glided over the cords down into the grave. He bit
+the ends of his mustache and his gloved hand made
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;102]</span>
+several irresistible, nervous movements. And the
+look cast into that grave! The look cast at that
+casket lying in the bottom of that grave! On that
+casket was a plate bearing the inscription: "Louis
+Pièrre Rovère." That mute look, rapid and grief-stricken,
+was cast upon that open casket, which
+contained the body&mdash;the gash across its throat, dissected,
+mutilated; the face with those dreadful
+eyes, which had been taken from their orbits, and,
+after delivering up their secret, replaced!</p>
+
+<p>They now defiled past the grave, and Dantin, the
+first, with a hand which trembled, sprinkled upon
+the casket those drops of water which are for our
+dead the last tears. Ah! but he was pale, almost
+livid; and how he trembled&mdash;this man with a stern
+face! Bernardet noticed the slightest trace of
+emotion. He approached in his turn and took the
+holy water sprinkler; then, as he turned away, desirous
+of catching up with M. Dantin, he heard his
+name called, and, turning, saw Paul Rodier, whose
+face was all smiles.</p>
+
+<p>"Well! Monsieur Bernardet, what new?" he
+asked. The tall young man had a charming air.</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing new," said the agent.</p>
+
+<p>"You know that this murder has aroused a great
+deal of interest?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not doubt it."</p>
+
+<p>"Leon Luzarche is enchanted. Yes, Luzarche,
+the novelist. He had begun a novel, of which the
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;103]</span>
+first instalment was published in the same paper
+which brought out the first news of 'The Crime of
+the Boulevard de Clichy,' and as the paper has
+sold, sold, sold, he thinks that it is his story which
+has caused the immense and increased sales. No
+one is reading 'l'Ange-Gnome,' but the murder.
+All novelists ought to try to have a fine assassination
+published at the same time as their serials, so
+as to increase the sales of the paper. What a fine
+collaboration, Monsieur! Pleasantry, Monsieur!
+Have you any unpublished facts?"</p>
+
+<p>"No."</p>
+
+<p>"Not one? Not a trace?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing," Bernardet replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well! I&mdash;I have some, Monsieur&mdash;but it
+will surprise you. Read my paper! Make the
+papers sell."</p>
+
+<p>"But"&mdash;began the officer.</p>
+
+<p>"See here! Professional secret! Only, have
+you thought of the woman in black who came occasionally
+to see the ex-Consul?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly."</p>
+
+<p>"Well, she must be made to come back&mdash;that
+woman in black. It is not an easy thing to do.
+But I believe that I have ferreted her out. Yes, in
+one of the provinces."</p>
+
+<p>"Where?"</p>
+
+<p>"Professional secret," repeated the reporter,
+laughing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;104]</span>
+"And if M. Ginory asks for your professional
+secret?"</p>
+
+<p>"I will answer him as I answer you. Read my
+paper! Read <i>Lutèce</i>!"</p>
+
+<p>"But the Judge, to him"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Professional secret," said Paul Rodier for the
+third time. "But what a romance it would make!
+The Woman in Black!"</p>
+
+<p>While listening, Bernardet had not lost sight of
+M. Dantin, who, in the centre of one of the avenues,
+stood looking at the slowly moving crowd of
+curiosity seekers. He seemed to be vainly searching
+for a familiar face. He looked haggard.
+Whether it was grief or remorse, he certainly
+showed violent emotion. The police officer divined
+that a sharp struggle was taking place within that
+man's heart, and the sadness was great with which
+he watched that crowd in order to discover some
+familiar face, but he beheld only those of the
+curious. What Bernardet considered of the greatest
+importance was not to lose sight of this person of
+whose existence he was ignorant an hour before;
+and who, to him, was the perpetrator of the deed
+or an accomplice. He followed Dantin at a distance,
+who, from the cemetery at Montmartre went
+on foot directly to the Rue de Richelieu, and
+stopped at the number he had given, 114.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet allowed some minutes to pass after the
+man on whose track he was had entered. Then he
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;105]</span>
+asked the concierge if M. Jacques Dantin was at
+home. He questioned him closely and became convinced
+that M. Rovère's friend had really lived
+there two years and had no profession.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said the police agent, "it is not this
+Dantin for whom I am looking. He is a banker."
+He excused himself, went out, hailed a fiacre, and
+gave the order: "To the Préfecture."</p>
+
+<p>His report to the Chief, M. Morel, was soon
+made. He listened to him with attention, for he
+had absolute confidence in the police officer. "Never
+any <i>gaff</i> with Bernardet," M. Morel was wont to
+say. He, like Bernardet, soon felt convinced that
+this man was probably the murderer of the ex-Consul.</p>
+
+<p>"As to the motive which led to the crime, we
+shall know it later."</p>
+
+<p>He wished, above everything else, to have strict
+inquiries made into Dantin's past life, in regard to
+his present existence; and the inquiries would be
+compared with his answers to the questions which
+M. Ginory would ask him when he had been cited
+as a witness.</p>
+
+<p>"Go at once to M. Ginory's room, Bernardet,"
+said the Chief. "During this time I would learn
+a little about what kind of a man this is."</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet had only to cross some corridors and
+mount a few steps to reach the gallery upon which
+M. Ginory's room opened. While waiting to be
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;106]</span>
+admitted he passed up and down; seated on benches
+were a number of malefactors, some of whom knew
+him well, who were waiting examination. He was
+accustomed to see this sight daily, and without being
+moved, but this time he was overcome by a
+sort of agony, a spasm which contracted even his
+fingers and left his nerves in as quivering a state
+as does insomnia. Truly, in the present case he
+was much more concerned than in an ordinary manhunt.
+The officer experienced the fear which an
+inventor feels before the perfection of a new discovery.
+He had undertaken a formidable problem,
+apparently insoluble, and he desired to solve it.
+Once or twice he took out from the pocket of his
+redingote an old worn case and looked at the proofs
+of the retina which he had pasted on a card. There
+could be no doubt. This figure, a little confused,
+had the very look of the man who had bent over
+the grave. M. Ginory would be struck by it when
+he had Jacques Dantin before him. Provided the
+Examining Magistrate still had the desire which
+Bernardet had incited in him, to push the matter
+to the end. Fortunately M. Ginory was very curious.
+With this curiosity anything might happen.
+The time seemed long. What if this Dantin, who
+spoke of leaving Paris, should disappear, should
+escape the examination? What miserable little
+affair occupied M. Ginory? Would he ever be at
+liberty?</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;107]</span>
+The door opened, a man in a blouse was led out;
+the registrar appeared on the threshold and Bernardet
+asked if he could not see M. Ginory immediately,
+as he had an important communication to
+make to him.</p>
+
+<p>"I will not detain him long," he said.</p>
+
+<p>Far from appearing annoyed, the Magistrate
+seemed delighted to see the officer. He related to
+him all he knew, how he had seen the man at M.
+Rovère's funeral. That Mme. Moniche had recognized
+him as the one whom she had surprised standing
+with M. Rovère before the open safe. That he
+had signed his name and took first rank in the
+funeral cortège, less by reason of an old friendship
+which dated from childhood than by that strange
+and impulsive sentiment which compels the guilty
+man to haunt the scene of his crime, to remain near
+his victim, as if the murder, the blood, the corpse,
+held for him a morbid fascination.</p>
+
+<p>"I shall soon know," said M. Ginory. He dictated
+to the registrar a citation to appear before
+him, rang the bell and gave the order to serve the
+notice on M. Dantin at the given address and to
+bring him to the Palais.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not lose sight of him," he said to Bernardet,
+and began some other examinations. Bernardet
+bowed and his eyes shone like those of a sleuth
+hound on the scent of his prey.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;108]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER X.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Between</span> the examining Magistrate, who questioned,
+and the man cited to appear before him, who
+replied, it was a duel; a close game, rapid and tragic,
+in which each feint might make a mortal wound; in
+which each parry and thrust might be decisive.
+No one in the world has the power of the man who,
+in a word, can change to a prisoner the one who
+enters the Palais as a passer-by. Behind this inquisitor
+of the law the prison stands; the tribunal
+in its red robes appears; the beams of the scaffold
+cast their sinister shadows, and the magistrate's
+cold chamber already seems to have the lugubrious
+humidity of the dungeons where the condemned
+await their fate.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Dantin arrived at the Palais in answer
+to the Magistrate's citation, with the apparent
+alacrity of a man who, regretting a friend tragically
+put out of the world, wishes to aid in avenging
+him. He did not hesitate a second, and Bernardet,
+who saw him enter the carriage, was struck with
+the seeming eagerness and haste with which he responded
+to the Magistrate's order. When M.
+Ginory was informed that Jacques Dantin had arrived,
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;109]</span>
+he allowed an involuntary "Ah!" to escape
+him. This ah! seemed to express the satisfaction
+of an impatient spectator when the signal is given
+which announces that the curtain is about to be
+raised. For the Examining Magistrate, the drama
+in which he was about to unravel the mystery was
+to begin. He kept his eyes fixed upon the door,
+attributing, correctly, a great importance to the
+first impression the comer would make upon him
+as he entered the room. M. Ginory found that he
+was much excited; this was to him a novel thing;
+but by exercising his strong will he succeeded in
+mastering the emotion, and his face and manner
+showed no trace of it.</p>
+
+<p>In the open door M. Jacques Dantin appeared.
+The first view, for the Magistrate, was favorable.
+The man was tall, well built; he bowed with grace
+and looked straight before him. But at the same
+time M. Ginory was struck by the strange resemblance
+of this haughty face to that image obtained
+by means of Bernardet's kodak. It seemed to him
+that this image had the same stature, the same
+form as that man surrounded by the hazy clouds.
+Upon a second examination it seemed to the
+Magistrate that the face betrayed a restrained violence,
+a latent brutality. The eyes were stern,
+under their bristling brows; the pointed beard,
+quite thin on the cheeks, showed the heavy jaws,
+and under the gray mustache the under lip protruded
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;110]</span>
+like those of certain Spanish cavaliers
+painted by Velasquez.</p>
+
+<p>"Prognathous," thought M. Ginory, as he noticed
+this characteristic. With a gesture he motioned
+M. Dantin to a chair. The man was there before
+the Judge who, with crossed hands, his elbows
+leaning on his papers, seemed ready to talk of insignificant
+things, while the registrar's bald head
+was bent over his black table as he rapidly took
+notes. The interview took on a grave tone, but as
+between two men who, meeting in a salon, speak
+of the morning or of the première of the evening
+before, and M. Ginory asked M. Dantin for some
+information in regard to M. Rovère.</p>
+
+<p>"Did you know him intimately?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, M. le Juge."</p>
+
+<p>"For how many years?"</p>
+
+<p>"For more than forty. We were comrades at
+a school in Bordeaux."</p>
+
+<p>"You are a Bordelais?"</p>
+
+<p>"Like Rovère, yes," Dantin replied.</p>
+
+<p>"Of late, have you seen M. Rovère frequently?"</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon, M. le Juge, but what do
+you mean by of late?"</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory believed that he had discovered in this
+question put by a man who was himself being interrogated&mdash;a
+tactic&mdash;a means of finding before replying,
+time for reflection. He was accustomed to
+these man&oelig;uvres of the accused.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;111]</span>
+"When I say of late," he replied, "I mean
+during the past few weeks or days which preceded
+the murder&mdash;if that suits you."</p>
+
+<p>"I saw him often, in fact, even oftener than
+formerly."</p>
+
+<p>"Why?"</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Dantin seemed to hesitate.
+"I do not know&mdash;chance. In Paris one has intimate
+friends, one does not see them for some
+months; and suddenly one sees them again, and
+one meets them more frequently."</p>
+
+<p>"Have you ever had any reason for the interruptions
+in your relations with M. Rovère when
+you ceased to see him, as you say?"</p>
+
+<p>"None whatever."</p>
+
+<p>"Was there between you any sort of rivalry,
+any motive for coldness?"</p>
+
+<p>"Any motive&mdash;any rivalry. What do you mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know," said the great man; "I ask
+you. I am questioning you."</p>
+
+<p>The registrar's pen ran rapidly and noiselessly
+over the paper, with the speed of a bird on the
+wing.</p>
+
+<p>These words, "I am questioning you," seemed
+to make an unexpected, disagreeable impression
+on Dantin, and he frowned.</p>
+
+<p>"When did you visit Rovère the last time?"</p>
+
+<p>"The last time?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Strive to remember."</p>
+
+<p>"Two or three days before the murder."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;112]</span>
+"It was not two or three days; it was two days
+exactly before the assassination."</p>
+
+<p>"You are right, I beg your pardon."</p>
+
+<p>The Examining Magistrate waited a moment,
+looking the man full in the eyes. It seemed to
+him that a slight flush passed over his hitherto
+pale face.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you suspect anyone as the murderer of
+Rovère?" asked M. Ginory after a moment's reflection.</p>
+
+<p>"No one," said Dantin. "I have tried to think
+of some one."</p>
+
+<p>"Had Rovère any enemies?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know of any."</p>
+
+<p>The Magistrate swung around by a detour
+habitual with him to Jacques Dantin's last visit to
+the murdered man, and begged him to be precise,
+and asked him if anything had especially struck
+him during that last interview with his friend.</p>
+
+<p>"The idea of suicide having been immediately
+dropped on the simple examination of the wound,
+no doubt exists as to the cause of death. Rovère
+was assassinated. By whom? In your last interview
+was there any talk between you of any uneasiness
+which he felt in regard to anything? Was he occupied
+with any especial affair? Had he&mdash;sometimes
+one has presentiments&mdash;any presentiment of
+an impending evil, that he was running any danger?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;113]</span>
+"No," Dantin replied. "Rovère made no allusion
+to me of any peril which he feared. I have
+asked myself who could have any interest in his
+death. One might have done the deed for plunder."</p>
+
+<p>"That seems very probable to me," said the Magistrate,
+"but the examination made in the apartment
+proves that not a thing had been touched.
+Theft was not the motive."</p>
+
+<p>"Then?" asked Dantin.</p>
+
+<p>The sanguine face of the Magistrate, that robust
+visage, with its massive jaws, lighted up with a
+sort of ironical expression.</p>
+
+<p>"Then we are here to search for the truth and to
+find it." In this response, made in a mocking tone,
+the registrar, who knew every varying shade of
+tone in his Chief's voice, raised his head, for in this
+tone he detected a menace.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you tell me all that passed in that last interview?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing whatever which could in any way put
+justice on the track of the criminal."</p>
+
+<p>"But yet can you, or, rather, I should say, ought
+you not to relate to me all that was said or done?
+The slightest circumstance might enlighten us."</p>
+
+<p>"Rovère spoke to me of private affairs," Dantin
+replied, but quickly added: "They were insignificant
+things."</p>
+
+<p>"What are insignificant things?"</p>
+
+<p>"Remembrances&mdash;family matters."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;114]</span>
+"Family things are not insignificant, above all
+in a case like this. Had Rovère any family? No
+relative assisted at the obsequies."</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Dantin seemed troubled, unnerved rather,
+and this time it was plainly visible. He replied in
+a short tone, which was almost brusque:</p>
+
+<p>"He talked of the past."</p>
+
+<p>"What past?" asked the Judge, quickly.</p>
+
+<p>"Of his youth&mdash;of moral debts."</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory turned around in his chair, leaned
+back, and said in a caustic tone: "Truly, Monsieur,
+you certainly ought to complete your information
+and not make an enigma of your deposition.
+I do not understand this useless reticence,
+and moral debts, to use your words; they are only
+to gain time. What, then, was M. Rovère's past?"</p>
+
+<p>Dantin hesitated a moment; not very long.
+Then he firmly said: "That, Monsieur le Juge, is
+a secret confided to me by my friend, and as it has
+nothing to do with this matter, I ask you to refrain
+from questioning me about it."</p>
+
+<p>"I beg your pardon," the magistrate replied.
+"There is not, there cannot be a secret for an Examining
+Magistrate. In Rovère's interests, whose
+memory ought to have public vindication, yes, in
+his interests, and I ought to say also in your own,
+it is necessary that you should state explicitly
+what you have just alluded to. You tell me that
+there is a secret. I wish to know it."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;115]</span>
+"It is the confidence of a dead person, Monsieur,"
+Dantin replied, in vibrating tones.</p>
+
+<p>"There are no confidences when justice is in the
+balance."</p>
+
+<p>"But it is also the secret of a living person,"
+said Jacques Dantin.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it of yourself of whom you speak?"</p>
+
+<p>He gazed keenly at the face, now tortured and
+contracted.</p>
+
+<p>Dantin replied: "No, I do not speak of myself,
+but of another."</p>
+
+<p>"That other&mdash;who is he?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is impossible to tell you."</p>
+
+<p>"Impossible?"</p>
+
+<p>"Absolutely impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will repeat to you my first question&mdash;'Why?'"</p>
+
+<p>"Because I have sworn on my honor to reveal it
+to no one."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, ah!" said Ginory, mockingly; "it was a
+vow? That is perfect!"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Monsieur le Juge; it was a vow."</p>
+
+<p>"A vow made to whom?"</p>
+
+<p>"To Rovère."</p>
+
+<p>"Who is no longer here to release you from it.
+I understand."</p>
+
+<p>"And," asked Dantin, with a vehemence which
+made the registrar's thin hand tremble as it flew
+over the paper, "what do you understand?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;116]</span>
+"Pardon," said M. Ginory; "you are not here
+to put questions, but to answer those which are
+asked you. It is certain that a vow which binds
+the holder of a secret is a means of defence, but
+the accused have, by making common use of it,
+rendered it useless."</p>
+
+<p>The Magistrate noticed the almost menacing
+frown with which Dantin looked at him at the
+words, "the accused."</p>
+
+<p>"The accused?" said the man, turning in his
+chair. "Am I one of the accused?" His voice
+was strident, almost strangled.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know that," said M. Ginory, in a very
+calm tone; "I say that you wish to keep your
+secret, and it is a claim which I do not admit."</p>
+
+<p>"I repeat, Monsieur le Juge, that the secret is
+not mine."</p>
+
+<p>"It is no longer a secret which can remain
+sacred here. A murder has been committed, a
+murderer is to be found, and everything you know
+you ought to reveal to justice."</p>
+
+<p>"But if I give you my word of honor that it has
+not the slightest bearing on the matter&mdash;with the
+death of Rovère?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall tell my registrar to write your very
+words in reply&mdash;he has done it&mdash;I shall continue
+to question you, precisely because you speak to me
+of a secret which has been confided to you and
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;117]</span>
+which you refuse to disclose to me. Because you
+do refuse?"</p>
+
+<p>"Absolutely!"</p>
+
+<p>"In spite of what I have said to you? It is a
+warning; you know it well!"</p>
+
+<p>"In spite of your warning!"</p>
+
+<p>"Take care!" M. Ginory softly said. His
+angry face had lost its wonted amiability. The
+registrar quickly raised his head. He felt that a
+decisive moment had come. The Examining Magistrate
+looked directly into Dantin's eyes and
+slowly said: "You remember that you were seen
+by the portress at the moment when Rovère, standing
+with you in front of his open safe, showed you
+some valuables?"</p>
+
+<p>Dantin waited a moment before he replied, as if
+measuring these words, and searching to find out
+just what M. Ginory was driving at. This silence,
+short and momentous, was dramatic. The Magistrate
+knew it well&mdash;that moment of agony when
+the question seems like a cord, like a lasso suddenly
+thrown, and tightening around one's neck.
+There was always, in his examination, a tragic
+moment.</p>
+
+<p>"I remember very well that I saw a person
+whom I did not know enter the room where I
+was with M. Rovère," Jacques Dantin replied at
+last.</p>
+
+<p>"A person whom you did not know? You
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;118]</span>
+knew her very well, since you had more than once
+asked her if M. Rovère was at home. That person
+is Mme. Moniche, who has made her deposition."</p>
+
+<p>"And what did she say in her deposition?"</p>
+
+<p>The Magistrate took a paper from the table in
+front of him and read: "When I entered, M.
+Rovère was standing before his safe, and I noticed
+that the individual of whom I spoke (the individual
+is you) cast upon the coupons a look
+which made me cold. I thought to myself: 'This
+man looks as if he is meditating some bad deed.'"</p>
+
+<p>"That is to say," brusquely said Dantin, who
+had listened with frowning brows and with an
+angry expression, "that Mme. Moniche accuses me
+of having murdered M. Rovère!"</p>
+
+<p>"You are in too much haste. Mme. Moniche
+has not said that precisely. She was only surprised&mdash;surprised
+and frightened&mdash;at your expression
+as you looked at the deeds, bills and
+coupons."</p>
+
+<p>"Those coupons," asked Dantin rather anxiously,
+"have they, then, been stolen?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah, that we know nothing about," and the
+Magistrate smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"One has found in Rovère's safe in the neighborhood
+of 460,000 francs in coupons, city of Paris
+bonds, shares in mining societies, rent rolls; but
+nothing to prove that there was before the assassination
+more than that sum."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;119]</span>
+"Had it been forced open?"</p>
+
+<p>"No; but anyone familiar with the dead man, a
+friend who knew the secret of the combination of
+the safe, the four letters forming the word, could
+have opened it without trouble."</p>
+
+<p>Among these words Dantin heard one which
+struck him full in the face&mdash;"friend." M. Ginory
+had pronounced it in an ordinary tone, but Dantin
+had seized and read in it a menace. For a moment
+the man who was being questioned felt a peculiar
+sensation. It seemed to him one day when he had
+been almost drowned during a boating party that
+same agony had seized him; it seemed that he had
+fallen into some abyss, some icy pool, which was
+paralyzing him. Opposite to him the Examining
+Magistrate experienced a contrary feeling. The
+caster of a hook and line feels a similar sensation;
+but it was intensified a hundred times in the Magistrate,
+a fisher of truth, throwing the line into a
+human sea, the water polluted, red with blood and
+mixed with mud.</p>
+
+<p>A friend! A friend could have abused the dead
+man's secret and opened that safe! And that friend&mdash;what
+name did he bear? Whom did M. Ginory
+wish to designate? Dantin, in spite of his <i>sang
+froid</i>, experienced a violent temptation to ask the
+man what he meant by those words. But the
+strange sensation which this interview caused him
+increased. It seemed to him that he had been
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;120]</span>
+there a long time&mdash;a very long time since he had
+crossed that threshold&mdash;and that this little room,
+separated from the world like a monk's cell, had
+walls thick enough to prevent any one from hearing
+anything outside. He felt as if hypnotized by that
+man, who at first had met him with a pleasant air,
+and who now bent upon him those hard eyes.
+Something doubtful, like vague danger, surrounded
+him, menaced him, and he mechanically followed the
+gesture which M. Ginory made as he touched the
+ivory button of an electric bell, as if on this gesture
+depended some event of his life. A guard entered.
+M. Ginory said to him in a short tone: "Have the
+notes been brought?"</p>
+
+<p>"M. Bernardet has just brought them to me,
+Monsieur le Juge."</p>
+
+<p>"Give them to me!" He then added: "Is Monsieur
+Bernardet here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Monsieur le Juge."</p>
+
+<p>"Very well."</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Dantin remembered the little man with
+whom he had talked in the journey from the house
+of death to the tomb, where he had heard some one
+call "Bernardet." He did not know at the time,
+but the name had struck him. Why did his presence
+seem of so much importance to this Examining
+Magistrate? And he looked, in his turn, at M.
+Ginory, who, a little near-sighted, was bending his
+head, with its sandy hair, its bald forehead, on which
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;121]</span>
+the veins stood out like cords, over his notes, which
+had been brought to him. Interesting notes&mdash;important,
+without doubt&mdash;for, visibly satisfied, M.
+Ginory allowed a word or two to escape him:
+"Good! Yes&mdash;Yes&mdash;Fine! Ah! Ah!&mdash;Very
+good!" Then suddenly Dantin saw Ginory raise
+his head and look at him&mdash;as the saying is&mdash;in the
+white of the eyes. He waited a moment before
+speaking, and suddenly put this question, thrust
+at Dantin like a knife-blow:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you a gambler, as I find?"</p>
+
+<p>The question made Jacques Dantin fairly bound
+from his chair. A gambler! Why did this man
+ask him if he was a gambler? What had his habits,
+his customs, his vices even, to do with this
+cause for which he had been cited, to do with Rovère's
+murder?</p>
+
+<p>"You are a gambler," continued the Examining
+Magistrate, casting from time to time a keen glance
+toward his notes. "One of the inspectors of gambling
+dens saw you lose at the Cercle des Publicistes
+25,000 francs in one night."</p>
+
+<p>"It is possible; the only important point is that
+I paid them!" The response was short, crisp,
+showing a little irritation and stupefaction.</p>
+
+<p>"Assuredly," said the Judge. "But you have
+no fortune. You have recently borrowed a considerable
+sum from the usurers in order to pay for
+some losses at the Bourse."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;122]</span>
+Dantin became very pale, his lips quivered, and
+his hands trembled. These signs of emotion did
+not escape the eyes of M. Ginory nor the registrar's.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it from your little notes that you have
+learned all that?" he demanded.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly," M. Ginory replied. "We have
+been seeking for some hours for accurate information
+concerning you; started a sort of diary or
+rough draught of your biography. You are fond
+of pleasure. You are seen, in spite of your age&mdash;I
+pray you to pardon me, there is no malice in the
+remark: I am older than you&mdash;everywhere where
+is found the famous Tout-Paris which amuses itself.
+The easy life is the most difficult for those
+who have no fortune. And, according to these
+notes&mdash;I refer to them again&mdash;of fortune you have
+none."</p>
+
+<p>"That is to say," interrupted Dantin, brusquely,
+"it would be very possible that, in order to obtain
+money for my needs, in order to steal the funds in
+his iron safe, I would assassinate my friend?"</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory did not allow himself to display any
+emotion at the insolent tone of these words, which
+had burst forth, almost like a cry. He looked
+Dantin full in the face, and with his hands crossed
+upon his notes, he said:</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur, in a matter of criminal investigation
+a Magistrate, eager for the truth ought to admit
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;123]</span>
+that anything is possible, even probable, but in this
+case I ought to recognize the fact that you have
+not helped me in my task. A witness finds you
+tête-à-tête with the victim and surprises your
+trouble at the moment when you are examining
+Rovère's papers. I ask what it was that happened
+between you, you reply that that is your secret,
+and for explanation you give me your word of
+honor that it had nothing whatever to do with the
+murder. You would yourself think that I was
+very foolish if I insisted any longer. True, there
+was no trace of any violence in the apartment,
+whatever subtraction may have been made from
+the safe. It appears that you are in a position to
+know the combination; it appears, also, that you
+are certainly in need of money; as clearly known
+as it is possible to learn in a hurried inquiry such
+as has been made, while you have been here. I
+question you. I let you know what you ought to
+know, and you fly into a passion. And note well!
+it is you yourself, in your anger and your violence,
+who speaks first the word of which I have not pronounced
+a syllable. It is you who have jumped
+straight to a logical conclusion of the suppositions
+which are still defective, without doubt, but are not
+the less suppositions; yes, it is you who say that
+with a little logic one can certainly accuse you of
+the murder of the one whom you called your
+friend."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;124]</span>
+Each word brought to Dantin's face an angry
+or a frightened expression, and the more slowly M.
+Ginory spoke, the more measured his words, emphasizing
+his verbs, with a sort of professional
+habit, as a surgeon touches a wound with a steel
+instrument, the questioned man, put through a
+sharp cross-examination, experienced a frightful
+anger, a strong internal struggle, which made the
+blood rush to his ears and ferocious lightnings dart
+through his eyes.</p>
+
+<p>"It is easy, moreover," continued M. Ginory, in
+a paternal tone, "for you to reduce to nothingness
+all these suppositions, and the smallest expression
+in regard to the rôle which you played in your last
+interview with Rovère would put everything
+right."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! must we go back to that?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly, we must go back to that! The
+whole question lies there! You come to an Examining
+Magistrate and tell him that there is a
+secret; you speak of a third person, of recollections
+of youth, of moral debts&mdash;and you are astonished
+that the Judge strives to wrest the truth from
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have told it."</p>
+
+<p>"The whole truth?"</p>
+
+<p>"It has nothing to do with Rovère's murder,
+and it would injure some one who knows nothing
+about it. I have told you so. I repeat it."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;125]</span>
+"Yes," said M. Ginory, "you hold to your
+enigma! Oh, well, I, the Magistrate, demand
+that you reveal the truth to me. I command you
+to tell it."</p>
+
+<p>The registrar's pen ran over the paper and
+trembled as if it scented a storm. The psychological
+moment approached. The registrar knew it
+well&mdash;that moment&mdash;and the word which the Magistrate
+would soon pronounce would be decisive.</p>
+
+<p>A sort of struggle began in Dantin's mind&mdash;one
+saw his face grow haggard, his eyes change their
+expression. He looked at the papers upon which
+M. Ginory laid his fat and hairy hands; those
+police notes <i>which gossiped</i>, as peasants say, in
+speaking of papers or writing which they cannot
+read and which denounce them. He asked himself
+what more would be disclosed by those notes of the
+police agents of the scandals of the club, of the
+neighbors, of the porters. He passed his hands
+over his forehead as if to wipe off the perspiration
+or to ease away a headache.</p>
+
+<p>"Come, now, it is not very difficult, and I have
+the right to know," said M. Ginory. After a moment
+Jacques Dantin said in a strong voice: "I
+swear to you, Monsieur, that nothing Rovère said
+to me when I saw him the last time could assist
+justice in any whatsoever, and I beg of you not to
+question me further about it."</p>
+
+<p>"Will you answer?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;126]</span>
+"I cannot, Monsieur."</p>
+
+<p>"The more you hesitate the more reason you
+give me to think that the communication would be
+grave."</p>
+
+<p>"Very grave, but it has nothing to do with
+your investigation."</p>
+
+<p>"It's not for you to outline the duties of my limits
+or my rights. Once more, I order you to reply."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot."</p>
+
+<p>"You will not."</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot," brusquely said the man run to earth,
+with accent of violence.</p>
+
+<p>The duel was finished.</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory began to laugh, or, rather, there was
+a nervous contraction of his mouth, and his sanguine
+face wore a scoffing look, while a mechanical
+movement of his massive jaws made him resemble
+a bulldog about to bite.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said he, "the situation is a very simple
+one and you force me to come to the end of my
+task. You understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly," said Jacques Dantin, with the impulsive
+anger of a man who stumbles over an
+article which he has left there himself.</p>
+
+<p>"You still refuse to reply?"</p>
+
+<p>"I refuse. I came here as a witness. I have
+nothing to reproach myself with, especially as I
+have nothing to fear. You must do whatever you
+choose to do."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;127]</span>
+"I can," said the Magistrate, "change a citation
+for appearance to a citation for retention. I will
+ask you once more"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is useless," interrupted Dantin. "An assassin.
+I! What folly! Rovère's murderer! It
+seems as if I were dreaming! It is absurd, absurd,
+absurd!"</p>
+
+<p>"Prove to me that it is absurd in truth. Do
+you not wish to reply?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have told you all I know."</p>
+
+<p>"But you have said nothing of what I have demanded
+of you."</p>
+
+<p>"It is not my secret."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes; there is your system. It is frequent, it
+is common. It is that of all the accused."</p>
+
+<p>"Am I already accused?" asked Dantin, ironically.</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory was silent a moment, then, slowly
+taking from the drawer of his desk some paper
+upon which Dantin could discern no writing this
+time, but some figures, engraved in black&mdash;he knew
+not what they were&mdash;the Magistrate held them between
+his fingers so as to show them. He swung
+them to and fro, and the papers rustled like dry
+leaves. He seemed to attach great value to these
+papers, which the registrar looked at from a corner
+of his eye, guessing that they were the photographic
+proofs which had been taken.</p>
+
+<p>"I beg of you to examine these proofs," said the
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;128]</span>
+Magistrate to Dantin. He held them out to him,
+and Dantin spread them on the table (there were
+four of them), then he put on his eyeglasses in
+order to see better. "What is that?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Look carefully," replied the Magistrate. Dantin
+bent over the proofs, examined them one by
+one, divined, rather than saw, in the picture which
+was a little hazy, the portrait of a man; and upon
+close examination began to see in the spectre a
+vague resemblance.</p>
+
+<p>"Do you not see that this picture bears a resemblance
+to you?"</p>
+
+<p>This time Dantin seemed the prey of some nightmare,
+and his eyes searched M. Ginory's face with
+a sort of agony. The expression struck Ginory.
+One would have said that a ghost had suddenly
+appeared to Dantin.</p>
+
+<p>"You say that it resembles me?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes. Look carefully! At first the portrait is
+vague; on closer examination it comes out from
+the halo which surrounds it, and the person who
+appears there bears your air, your features, your
+characteristics"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"It is possible," said Dantin. "It seems to resemble
+me; it seems as if I were looking at myself
+in a pocket mirror. But what does that signify?"</p>
+
+<p>"That signifies&mdash;Oh! I am going to astonish
+you. That signifies"&mdash;M. Ginory turned toward
+his registrar: "You saw the other evening, Favarel,
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;129]</span>
+the experiment in which Dr. Oudin showed us
+the heart and lungs performing their functions in
+the thorax of a living man, made visible by the
+Roentgen Rays. Well! This is not any more
+miraculous. These photographs (he turned now
+toward Dantin) were taken of the retina of the dead
+man's eye. They are the reflection, the reproduction
+of the image implanted there, the picture of the last
+living being contemplated in the agony; the last
+visual sensation which the unfortunate man experienced.
+The retina has given to us&mdash;as a witness&mdash;the
+image of the living person seen by the dead
+man for the last time!"</p>
+
+<p>A deep silence fell upon the three men in that
+little room, where one of them alone, lost his foothold
+at this strange revelation. For the Magistrate
+it was a decisive moment; when all had been said,
+when the man having been questioned closely,
+jumps at the foregone conclusion. As for the registrar,
+however blasé he may have become by these
+daily experiences, it was the decisive moment! the
+moment when, the line drawn from the water, the
+fish is landed, writhing on the hook!</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Dantin, with an instinctive movement,
+had rejected, pushed back on the table those photographs
+which burned his fingers like the cards in
+which some fortune teller has deciphered the signs
+of death.</p>
+
+<p>"Well?" asked M. Ginory.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;130]</span>
+"Well!" repeated Dantin in a strangled tone,
+either not comprehending or comprehending too
+much, struggling as if under the oppression of a
+nightmare.</p>
+
+<p>"How do you explain how your face, your shadow
+if you prefer, was found reflected in Rovère's eyes,
+and that in his agony, this was probably what he
+saw; yes, saw bending over him?"</p>
+
+<p>Dantin cast a frightened glance around the room,
+and asked himself if he was not shut up in a maniac's
+cell; if the question was real; if the voice
+he heard was not the voice of a dream!</p>
+
+<p>"How can I explain? but I cannot explain, I do
+not understand, I do not know&mdash;it is madness, it is
+frightful, it is foolish!"</p>
+
+<p>"But yet," insisted M. Ginory, "this folly, as
+you call it, must have some explanation."</p>
+
+<p>"What do you wish to have me say? I do not
+understand. I repeat, I do not understand."</p>
+
+<p>"What if you do not, you cannot deny your
+presence in the house at the moment of Rovère's
+death"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Why cannot I deny it?" Dantin interrupted.</p>
+
+<p>"Because the vision is there, hidden, hazy, in the
+retina; because this photograph, in which you recognized
+yourself, denounces, points out, your presence
+at the moment of the last agony."</p>
+
+<p>"I was not there! I swear that I was not there!"
+Dantin fervently declared.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;131]</span>
+"Then, explain," said the Magistrate.</p>
+
+<p>Dantin remained silent a moment, as if frightened.
+Then he stammered: "I am dreaming!&mdash;I
+dreaming!" and M. Ginory replied in a calm tone:</p>
+
+<p>"Notice that I attribute no exaggerated importance
+to these proofs. It is not on them alone that
+I base the accusation. But they constitute a
+strange witness, very disquieting in its mute eloquence.
+They add to the doubt which your desire
+for silence has awakened. You tell me that you
+were not near Rovère when he died. These proofs,
+irrefutable as a fact, seem to prove at once the contrary.
+Then, the day Rovère was assassinated
+where were you?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know. At home, without doubt. I
+will have to think it over. At what hour was
+Rovère killed?"</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory made a gesture of ignorance and in a
+tone of raillery said: "That! There are others
+who know it better than I." And Dantin, irritated,
+looked at him.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," went on the Magistrate, with mocking
+politeness, "the surgeons who can tell the hour in
+which he was killed." He turned over his papers.
+"The assassination was about an hour before midday.
+In Paris, in broad daylight, at that hour, a
+murder was committed!"</p>
+
+<p>"At that hour," said Jacques Dantin, "I was
+just leaving home."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;132]</span>
+"To go where?"</p>
+
+<p>"For a walk. I had a headache. I was going
+to walk in the Champs-Elysées to cure it."</p>
+
+<p>"And did you, in your walk, meet any one whom
+you knew?"</p>
+
+<p>"No one."</p>
+
+<p>"Did you go into some shop?"</p>
+
+<p>"I did not."</p>
+
+<p>"In short, you have no <i>alibi</i>?"</p>
+
+<p>The word made Dantin again tremble. He felt
+the meshes of the net closing around him.</p>
+
+<p>"An <i>alibi</i>! Ah that! Decidedly. Monsieur,
+you accuse me of assassinating my friend," he
+violently said.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not accuse; I ask a question." And M.
+Ginory in a dry tone which gradually became cutting
+and menacing said: "I question you, but
+I warn you that the interview has taken a bad
+turn. You do not answer; you pretend to keep
+secret I know not what information which concerns
+us. You are not yet exactly accused. But&mdash;but&mdash;but&mdash;you
+are going to be"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The Magistrate waited a moment as if to give
+the man time to reflect, and he held his pen
+suspended, after dipping it in the ink, as an
+auctioneer holds his ivory hammer before bringing
+it down to close a sale. "I am going to drop the
+pen," it seemed to say. Dantin, very angry, remained
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;133]</span>
+silent. His look of bravado seemed to
+say: "Do you dare? If you dare, do it!"</p>
+
+<p>"You refuse to speak?" asked Ginory for the
+last time.</p>
+
+<p>"I refuse."</p>
+
+<p>"You have willed it! Do you persist in giving
+no explanation; do you entrench yourself behind I
+know not what scruple or duty to honor; do you
+keep to your systematic silence? For the last
+time, do you still persist in this?"</p>
+
+<p>"I have nothing&mdash;nothing&mdash;nothing to tell
+you!" Dantin cried in a sort of rage.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well! Jacques Dantin," and the Magistrate's
+voice was grave and suddenly solemn.
+"You are from this moment arrested." The pen,
+uplifted till this instant, fell upon the paper. It
+was an order for arrest. The registrar looked at
+the man. Jacques Dantin did not move. His expression
+seemed vague, the fixed expression of a
+person who dreams with wide-open eyes. M.
+Ginory touched one of the electric buttons above
+his table and pointed Dantin out to the guards,
+whose shakos suddenly darkened the doorway.
+"Take away the prisoner," he said shortly and
+mechanically, and, overcome, without revolt,
+Jacques Dantin allowed himself to be led through
+the corridors of the Palais, saying nothing, comprehending
+nothing, stumbling occasionally, like an
+intoxicated man or a somnambulist.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;134]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XI.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">M. Bernardet</span> was triumphant. He went home
+to dinner in a jubilant mood. His three little girls,
+dressed alike, clasped him round the neck, all at
+the same time, while Mme. Bernardet, always
+fresh, smiling and gay, held up her face with its
+soft, round, rosy cheeks to him.</p>
+
+<p>"My little ones," said the officer, "I believe that
+I have done well, and that my chief will advance
+me or give me some acknowledgment. I will buy
+you some bracelets, my dears, if that happens. But it
+is not the idea of filthy lucre which has urged me
+on, and I believe that I have certainly made a great
+stride in judiciary instruction, all owing to my
+kodak. It would be too long an explanation and,
+perhaps, a perfectly useless one. Let us go to dinner.
+I am as hungry as a wolf."</p>
+
+<p>He ate, truly, with a good appetite, scarcely
+stopped to tell how the assassin was under lock
+and key. The man had been measured and had become
+a number in the collection, always increasing,
+of accused persons in the catalogue continued each
+day for the Museum of Crime.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! He is not happy," said Bernardet between
+two spoonfuls of soup. "Not happy, not happy
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;135]</span>
+at all! Not happy, and astonished&mdash;protesting,
+moreover, his innocence, as they all do. It is customary."</p>
+
+<p>"But," sweetly asked good little Mme. Bernardet,
+"what if he is innocent?" And the three
+little girls, raising their heads, looked at their
+father, as if to repeat their mother's question. The
+eldest murmured: "Yes, what if mamma is right?"</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet shrugged his shoulders.</p>
+
+<p>"To hear them, if one listened to them, one
+would believe them all innocent, and the crimes
+would have to commit themselves. If this one is
+innocent I shall be astonished, as if I should see
+snow fall in Paris in June; he will have to prove
+that he is innocent. These things prove themselves.
+Give me some more soup, Mélanie."</p>
+
+<p>As Mme. Bernardet turned a ladleful of hot soup
+into her husband's plate she softly asked: "Are
+there no innocent ones condemned? Do you never
+deceive yourself?" Bernardet did not stop eating.
+"I cannot say&mdash;no one is infallible, no one&mdash;the
+shrewdest deceive themselves; they are sometimes
+duped. But it is rare, very rare. As well to say
+that it does not happen&mdash;Lesurques, yes (and the
+three little girls opened wide their large blue eyes
+as at a play), the Lesurques of the Courier de
+Lyon, who has made you weep so many times at
+the theatre at Montmartre; one would like to revise
+his trial to reinstate him, but no one has been
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;136]</span>
+able to do it. I have studied his trial&mdash;by my faith,
+I swear, I would condemn him still&mdash;ah! what
+good soup!"</p>
+
+<p>"But this one to-day?" asked Mme. Bernardet;
+"art thou certain? What is his name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Dantin&mdash;Jacques Dantin. Oh! He is a gentleman.
+A very fine man, elegant, indeed. Some
+Bohemian of the upper class, who evidently needed
+money, and who&mdash;Rovère had some valuables in
+his safe. The occasion made the thief&mdash;and there
+it is."</p>
+
+<p>"Papa," interrupted the eldest of the three little
+girls, "canst thou take us to see the trial, when he
+shall be sworn?"</p>
+
+<p>"That depends! It is not easy! I will try&mdash;I
+will ask. If thou wilt work hard&mdash;Oh, dame!"
+said Bernardet, "that will be a drama!"</p>
+
+<p>"I will work hard."</p>
+
+<p>At dessert, after he had taken his coffee, he
+allowed his three little girls to dip lumps of sugar
+into his saucer. He threw himself into his easy
+chair; he gave a sigh of satisfaction, like a man
+whose daily, wearisome tasks are behind him, and
+who is catching a moment's repose.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" he said, opening a paper which his wife
+had placed on a table near him, together with a
+little glass of cordial sent to them by some cousins
+in Burgundy; "I am going to see what has happened
+and what those good journalists have invented
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;137]</span>
+about the affair in the Boulevard de Clichy.
+It is true, it is a steeplechase between the reporters
+and us. Sometimes they win the race in the mornings.
+At other times, when they know nothing&mdash;ah!
+Then they invent, they embroider their histories!"</p>
+
+<p>A petroleum lamp lighted the paper which Bernardet
+unfolded and began to read.</p>
+
+<p>"Let us see what <i>Lutèce</i> says."</p>
+
+<p>He suddenly remembered what Paul Rodier had
+said to him. "Read my journal!" This woman
+in black, found in the province, did she really exist?
+Had the novelist written a romance in order
+to follow the example of his friend? He looked
+over the paper to see if Paul Rodier had collaborated,
+as his friend had. Bernardet skipped over
+the headlines and glanced at the theatrical news.
+"Politics&mdash;they are all the same to me&mdash;Ministerial
+crisis&mdash;nothing new about that. That could
+as well be published in yesterday's paper as in to-day's!
+'The Crime of the Boulevard de Clichy'&mdash;ah!
+Good! Very good! We shall see." And he
+began to read. Had Paul Rodier invented all the
+information to which he had treated the public?
+What was certain was that the police officer
+frowned and now gave strict attention to what he
+was reading, as if weighing the reporter's words.</p>
+
+<p>Rodier had republished the biography of the ex-Consul.
+M. Rovère had been mixed, in South
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;138]</span>
+America, in violent dramas. He was a romantic
+person, about whom more than one adventure in
+Buenos Ayres was known. The reporter had
+gained his information from an Argentine journal,
+the <i>Prensa</i>, established in Paris, and whose editor,
+in South America, had visited, intimately, the
+French Consul. The appearance of a woman in
+black, those visits made on fixed dates, as on
+anniversaries, revealed an intimacy, a relationship
+perhaps, of the murdered man with that unknown
+woman. The woman was young, elegant and did
+not live in Paris. Rodier had set himself to
+discover her retreat, her name; and perhaps, thanks
+to her, to unravel the mystery which still enveloped
+the murder.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Heuh!</i> That is not very precise information,"
+thought the police officer. But it at least awoke
+Bernardet's curiosity and intelligence. It solved
+no problem, but it put one. M. de Sartines's famous
+"<i>search for the woman</i>" came naturally to
+Paul Rodier's pen. And he finished the article
+with some details about Jacques Dantin, the intimate,
+the only friend of Louis Pièrre Rovère; and
+the reporter, when he had written this, was still
+ignorant that Dantin was under arrest.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow," said Bernardet to himself, "he
+will give us Dantin's biography. He tells me nothing
+new in his report. And yet"&mdash;&mdash;He folded up
+the paper and laid it on the table, and while sipping
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;139]</span>
+his cordial he thought of that mysterious visitor&mdash;the
+woman in black&mdash;and told himself that
+truly the trail must be there. He would see Moniche
+and his wife again; he would question them;
+he would make a thorough search.</p>
+
+<p>"But what for? We have the guilty man. It
+is a hundred to one that the assassin is behind bars.
+The woman might be an accomplice."</p>
+
+<p>Then Bernardet, filled with passion for his profession,
+rather than vanity&mdash;this artist in a police
+sense; this lover of art for art's sake&mdash;rubbed his
+hands and silently applauded himself because he
+had insisted, and, as it were, compelled M. Ginory
+and the doctors to adopt his idea. He, the humble,
+unknown sub-officer, standing back and simply
+striving to do his duty, had influenced distinguished
+persons as powerful as magistrates and members of
+the Academy. They had obeyed his suggestion.
+The little Bernardet felt that he had done a glorious
+deed. He had experienced a strong conviction,
+which would not be denied. He had proved that
+what had been considered only a chimera was a
+reality. He had accomplished a seeming impossibility.
+He had evoked the dead man's secret even
+from the tomb.</p>
+
+<p>"And M. Ginory thinks that it will not help his
+candidature at the Academy? He will wear the
+green robe, and he will owe it to me. There are
+others who owe me something, too."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;140]</span>
+With his faculty for believing in his dreams, of
+seeing his visions appear, realized and living&mdash;a
+faculty which, in such a man, seemed like the
+strange hallucination of a poet&mdash;Bernardet did not
+doubt for a moment the reality of this phantom
+which had appeared in the retina of the eye. It
+was nothing more, that eye removed by the surgeon's
+scalpel, than an avenging mirror. It accused,
+it overwhelmed! Jacques Dantin was found
+there in all the atrocity of his crime.</p>
+
+<p>"When I think, when I think that they did not
+wish to try the experiment. It is made now!"
+thought Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory had strongly recommended that all
+that part of the examination should not be made
+public. Absolute silence was necessary. If the
+press could have obtained the slightest information,
+every detail of the experiment would have become
+public property, and the account would have been
+embellished and made as fantastic as possible.
+This would have been a deep mine for Edgar A.
+Poe, who would have worked that lode well and
+made the Parisians shudder. How the ink would
+have been mixed with Rovère's blood! It was
+well understood that if the suspected man would in
+the end confess his guilt, the result of the singular
+scientifically incredible experiment should be made
+known. But until then absolute silence. Every
+thing which had been said and done around the dissecting
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;141]</span>
+table at the Morgue, or in the Examining
+Magistrate's room, would remain a secret.</p>
+
+<p>But would Dantin confess?</p>
+
+<p>The next day after M. Ginory had put him under
+arrest Bernardet had gone to the Palais for news.
+He wished to consult his chief about the "Woman
+in Black," to ask him what he thought of the
+article which had been published in the paper by
+Paul Rodier. M. Leriche attached no great importance
+to it.</p>
+
+<p>"A reporter's information. Very vague. There
+is always a woman, <i>parbleu!</i> in the life of every
+man. But did this one know Dantin? She seems
+to me simply an old, abandoned friend, and who
+came occasionally to ask aid of the old boy"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The woman noticed by Moniche is young," said
+Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>"Abandoned friends are often young," M. Leriche
+replied, visibly enchanted with his observation.</p>
+
+<p>As for Dantin, he still maintained his obstinate
+silence. He persisted in finding iniquitous an
+arrest for which there was no motive, and he kept
+the haughty, almost provoking attitude of those
+whom the Chief called the greatest culprits.</p>
+
+<p>"Murderers in redingotes believe that they have
+sprung from Jupiter's thigh, and will not admit
+that any one should be arrested except those who
+wear smocks and peaked hats. They believe in an
+aristocracy and its privileges, and threaten to have
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;142]</span>
+us removed&mdash;you know that very well, Bernardet.
+Then, as time passes, they become, in a measure,
+calm and meek as little lambs; then they whimper
+and confess. Dantin will do as all the others have
+done. For the moment he howls about his innocence,
+and will threaten us, you will see, with a
+summons from the Chamber. That is of no importance."</p>
+
+<p>The Chief then gave the officer some instructions.
+He need not trouble himself any more, just now,
+about the Dantin affair, but attend to another
+matter of less importance&mdash;a trivial affair. After
+the murder and his experiences at the Morgue this
+matter seemed a low one to Bernardet. But each
+duty has its antithesis. The police officer put into
+this petty affair of a theft the same zeal, the same
+sharp attention with which he had investigated the
+crime of the Boulevard de Clichy. It was his profession.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet started out on his quest. It was near
+the Halles (markets) that he had to work this time.
+The suspected man was probably one of the rascals
+who prowl about day and night, living on adventures,
+and without any home; sleeping under
+the bridges, or in one of the hovels on the outskirts
+of the Rue de Venise, where vice, distress and
+crime flourished. Bernardet first questioned the
+owner of the stolen property, obtained all the information
+which he could about the suspected man,
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;143]</span>
+and, with his keen scent for a criminal aroused, he
+glanced at everything&mdash;men, things, objects that
+would have escaped a less practised eye. He was
+walking slowly along toward the Permanence, looking
+keenly at the passers-by, the articles in the
+shops, the various movements in the streets, to see
+if he could get a hint upon which to work.</p>
+
+<p>It was his habit to thus make use of his walks.
+In a promenade he had more than once met a
+client, past or future. The boys fled before his
+piercing eyes; before this fat, jolly little man with
+the mocking smile which showed under his red
+mustache. This fright which he inspired made
+him laugh inwardly. He knew that he was
+respected, that he was feared. Among all these
+passers-by who jostled him, without knowing that
+he was watching them, he was a power, an unknown
+but sovereign power. He walked along
+with short, quick steps and watchful eyes, very
+much preoccupied with this affair, thinking of the
+worthless person for whom he was seeking, but he
+stopped occasionally to look at the wares spread
+out in some bric-a-brac shop or in some book store
+window. This also was his habit and his method.
+He ran his eye over the illustrated papers lying in
+a row in front; over the Socialistic placards, the
+song books. He kept himself <i>au courant</i> with
+everything which was thought, seen, proclaimed
+and sung.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;144]</span>
+"When one governs," thought Bernardet, "one
+ought to have the habit of going afoot in the street.
+One can learn nothing from the depths of a coupé,
+driven by a coachman wearing a tri-colored cockade."
+He was going to the Préfecture, the Permanence,
+when in the Rue des Bons-Enfants he
+was instinctively attracted to a shop window
+where rusty old arms, tattered uniforms, worn
+shakos, garments without value, smoky pictures,
+yellowed engravings and chance ornaments, rare
+old copies of books, old romances, ancient books,
+with eaten bindings, a mass of dissimilar objects&mdash;lost
+keys, belt buckles, abolished medals, battered
+sous&mdash;were mixed together in an oblong space as
+in a sort of trough. On either side of this shop
+window hung some soiled uniforms, a Zouave's
+vest, an Academician's old habit, lugubrious with
+its embroideries of green, a soiled costume which
+had been worn by some Pierrot at the Carnival.
+It was, in all its sad irony, the vulgar "hand-me-down
+that!" which makes one think of that other
+Morgue where the clothing has been rejected by the
+living or abandoned by the dead.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet was neither of a melancholy temperament
+nor a dreamer, and he did not give much
+time to the tearful side of the question, but he was
+possessed of a ravenous curiosity, and the sight,
+however frequent, of that shop window always attracted
+him. With, moreover, that sort of magnetism
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;145]</span>
+which the searchers, great or small, intuitively
+feel&mdash;a collector of knick-knacks, discoverers of unknown
+countries, book worms bent over the volumes
+at four sous apiece, or chemists crouched
+over a retort&mdash;Bernardet had been suddenly attracted
+by a portrait exposed as an object rarer
+than the others, in the midst of this detritus of
+abandoned luxury or of past military glory.</p>
+
+<p>Yes, among the tobacco boxes, the belt buckles,
+the Turkish poniards, watches with broken cases,
+commonplace Japanese ornaments, a painting, oval
+in form, lay there&mdash;a sort of large medallion without
+a frame, and at first sight, by a singular attraction,
+it drew and held the attention of the
+police officer.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said Bernardet out loud, "but this is
+singular."</p>
+
+<p>He leaned forward until his nose touched the
+cold glass, and peered fixedly at the picture. This
+painting, as large as one's hand, was the portrait
+of a man, and Bernardet fully believed at the first
+look he recognized the person whom the painter
+had reproduced.</p>
+
+<p>As his shadow fell across the window Bernardet
+could not distinctly see the painting, for it was not
+directly in the front line of articles displayed, and
+he stepped to one side to see if he could get a better
+view. Assuredly, there could be no doubt, the
+oval painting was certainly the portrait of Jacques
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;146]</span>
+Dantin, now accused of a crime. There was the
+same high forehead, the pointed beard, of the same
+color; the black redingote, tightly buttoned up and
+edged at the neck with the narrow line of a white
+linen collar, giving, in resembling a doublet, to
+this painting, the air of a trooper, of a swordsman,
+of a Guisard (a partisan of the Duke of Guise), of
+the time of Clouet.</p>
+
+<p>Something of a connoisseur in painting, without
+doubt, in his quality of amateur photographer,
+much accustomed to criticise a portrait if it was
+not a perfect likeness, Bernardet found in this
+picture a startling resemblance to Jacques Dantin;
+it was the very man himself! He appeared there,
+his thin face standing out from its greenish-black
+sombre background; the poise of the head displayed
+the same vigor as in the original; the clear-cut
+features looked energetic, and the skin had the
+same pallor which was characteristic of Dantin's
+complexion. This head, admirably painted, displayed
+an astonishing lifelike intensity. It had
+been done by a master hand, no doubt of that.
+And although in this portrait Jacques Dantin
+looked somewhat younger&mdash;for instance, the hair
+and pointed beard showed no silvery streaks in
+them&mdash;the resemblance was so marvelous that Bernardet
+immediately exclaimed: "It is he!"</p>
+
+<p>And most certainly it was Jacques Dantin himself.
+The more the officer examined it, the more
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;147]</span>
+convinced he became that this was a portrait of
+the man whom he had accompanied to the cemetery
+and to prison. But how could this picture have
+come into this bric-a-brac shop, and of whom could
+the dealer have obtained it? A reply to this would
+probably not be very difficult to obtain, and the
+police officer pushed back the door and found himself
+in the presence of a very large woman, with a
+pale, puffy face, which was surrounded by a lace
+cap. Her huge body was enveloped in a knitted
+woollen shawl. She wore spectacles.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet, without stopping to salute her,
+pointed out the portrait and asked to see it. When
+he held it in his hands he found the resemblance
+still more startling. It was certainly Jacques
+Dantin! The painting was signed "P. B., Bordeaux,
+1871." It was oval in shape; the frame
+was gone; the edge was marked, scratched, marred,
+as if the frame had been roughly torn from the
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>"Have you had this portrait a long time?" he
+asked of the shop woman.</p>
+
+<p>"I put it in the window to-day for the first time,"
+the huge woman answered. "Oh, it is a choice
+bit. It was painted by a wicked one."</p>
+
+<p>"Who brought it here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Some one who wished to sell it. A passer-by.
+If it would interest you to know his name"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;148]</span>&mdash;
+"Yes, certainly, it would interest me to know
+it," Bernardet replied.</p>
+
+<p>The shop woman looked at Bernardet defiantly
+and asked this question:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you know the man whose portrait that is?"</p>
+
+<p>"No. I do not know him. But this resembles
+one of my relatives. It pleases me. How much
+is it?"</p>
+
+<p>"A hundred francs," said the big woman.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet suppressed at the same time a sudden
+start and a smile.</p>
+
+<p>"A hundred francs! <i>Diable!</i> how fast you go.
+It is worth sous rather than francs."</p>
+
+<p>"That!" cried the woman, very indignant.
+"That? But look at this material, this background.
+It is famous, I tell you&mdash;I took it to an
+expert. At the public sale it might, perhaps,
+bring a thousand francs. My idea is that it is the
+picture of some renowned person. An actor or a
+former Minister. In fact, some historic person."</p>
+
+<p>"But one must take one's chance," Bernardet
+replied in a jeering tone. "But one hundred
+francs is one hundred francs. Too much for me.
+Who sold you the painting?"</p>
+
+<p>The woman went around behind the counter and
+opened a drawer, from which she took a note book,
+in which she kept a daily record of her sales.
+She turned over the leaves.</p>
+
+<p>"November 12, a small oval painting bought"&mdash;She
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;149]</span>
+readjusted her spectacles as if to better decipher
+the name.</p>
+
+<p>"I did not write the name myself; the man
+wrote it himself." She spelled out:</p>
+
+<p>"Charles&mdash;Charles Breton&mdash;Rue de la Condamine,
+16"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Charles Breton," Bernardet repeated; "who
+is this Charles Breton? I would like to know if
+he painted this portrait, which seems like a family
+portrait and has come to sell it"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"You know," interrupted the woman, "that that
+often happens. It is business. One buys or one
+sells all in good time."</p>
+
+<p>"And this Breton; how old was he?"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, young. About thirty years old. Very
+good looking. Dark, with a full beard."</p>
+
+<p>"Did anything about him especially strike you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing!" The woman shortly replied; she
+had become tired of these questions and looked at
+the little man with a troubled glance.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet readily understood; and assuming a
+paternal, a beaming air, he said with his sweet
+smile:</p>
+
+<p>"I will not <i>fence</i> any more; I will tell you the
+truth. I am a Police Inspector, and I find that
+this portrait strangely resembles a man whom we
+have under lock and key. You understand that it
+is very important I should know all that is to be
+ascertained about this picture."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;150]</span>
+"But I have told you all I know, Monsieur," said
+the shopkeeper. "Charles Breton, Rue de la Condamine,
+16; that is the name and address. I paid
+20 francs for it. There is the receipt&mdash;read it, I
+beg. It is all right. We keep a good shop.
+Never have we, my late husband and I, been
+mixed with anything unlawful. Sometimes the
+bric-a-brac is soiled, but our hands and consciences
+have always been clean. Ask any one along the
+street about the Widow Colard. I owe no one and
+every one esteems me"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>The Widow Colard would have gone on indefinitely
+if Bernardet had not stopped her. She
+had, at first mention of the police, suddenly turned
+pale, but now she was very red, and her anger displayed
+itself in a torrent of words. He stemmed
+the flood of verbs.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not accuse you, Mme. Colard, and I have
+said only what I wished to say. I passed by chance
+your shop; I saw in the window a portrait which resembled
+some one I knew. I ask you the price and
+I question you about its advent into your shop.
+There is nothing there which concerns you personally.
+I do not suspect you of receiving stolen
+goods; I do not doubt your good faith. I repeat
+my question. How much do you want for this
+picture?"</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty francs, if you please. That is what it
+cost me. I do not wish to have it draw me into
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;151]</span>
+anything troublesome. Take it for nothing, if that
+pleases you."</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all! I intend to pay you. Of what
+are you thinking, Mme. Colard?"</p>
+
+<p>The shopwoman had, like all people of a certain
+class, a horror of the police. The presence of a
+police inspector in her house seemed at once a dishonor
+and a menace. She felt herself vaguely under
+suspicion, and she felt an impulse to shout aloud
+her innocence.</p>
+
+<p>Always smiling, the good man, with a gesture
+like that of a prelate blessing his people, endeavored
+to reassure her, to calm her. But he could
+do nothing with her. She would not be appeased.
+In the long run this was perhaps as well, for she
+unconsciously, without any intention of aiding justice,
+put some clews into Bernardet's hands which
+finally aided him in tracing the man.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Colard still rebelled. Did they think she
+was a spy, an informer? She had never&mdash;no,
+never&mdash;played such a part. She did not know the
+young man. She had bought the picture as she
+bought any number of things.</p>
+
+<p>"And what if they should cut off his head because
+he had confidence in entering my shop&mdash;I
+should never forgive myself, never!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not going to bring Charles Breton to the
+scaffold. Not at all, not at all. It is only to find
+out who he is, and of whom he obtained this portrait.
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;152]</span>
+Once more&mdash;did nothing in his face strike
+you?"</p>
+
+<p>"Nothing!" Mme. Colard responded.</p>
+
+<p>She reflected a moment.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! yes; perhaps. The shape of his hat. A
+felt hat with wide brim, something like those worn
+in South America or Kareros. You know, the kind
+they call sombrero. The only thing I said to myself
+was, 'This is probably some returned traveler,'
+and if I had not seen at the bottom of the picture,
+Bordeaux, I should have thought that this might
+be the portrait of some Spaniard, some Peruvian."</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet looked straight into Mme. Colard's
+spectacles and listened intently, and he suddenly
+remembered what Moniche had said of the odd appearance
+of the man who had, like the woman in
+black, called on M. Rovère.</p>
+
+<p>"Some accomplice!" thought Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>He again asked Mme. Colard the price of the
+picture.</p>
+
+<p>"Anything you please," said the woman, still
+frightened. Bernardet smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"Come! come! What do you want for it?
+Fifty francs, eh? Fifty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Away with your fifty francs! I place it at
+your disposal for nothing, if you need it."</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet paid the sum he had named. He had
+always exactly, as if by principle, a fifty-franc note
+in his pocketbook. Very little money; a few white
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;153]</span>
+pieces, but always this note in reserve. One
+could never tell what might hinder him in his researches.
+He paid, then, this note, adding that in
+all probability Mme. Colard would soon be cited
+before the Examining Magistrate to tell him about
+this Charles Breton.</p>
+
+<p>"I cannot say anything else, for I do not know
+anything else," said the huge widow, whose breast
+heaved with emotion.</p>
+
+<p>She wrapped up the picture in a piece of silk
+paper, then in a piece of newspaper, which chanced
+to be the very one in which Paul Rodier had
+published his famous article on "The Crime of the
+Boulevard de Clichy." Bernardet left enchanted
+with his "find," and repeated over and over to
+himself: "It is very precious! It is a tid-bit!"</p>
+
+<p>Should he keep on toward the Préfecture to
+show this "find" to his Chief, or should he go at
+once to hunt up Charles Breton at the address he
+had given?</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet hesitated a moment, then he said to
+himself that, in a case like this, moments were
+precious; an hour lost was time wasted, and that
+as the address which Breton had given was not far
+away, he would go there first. "Rue de la Condamine,
+16," that was only a short walk to such a
+tramper as he was. He had good feet, a sharp eye
+and sturdy legs; he would soon be at the Batignolles.
+He had taken some famous tramps in his
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;154]</span>
+time, notably one night when he had scoured Paris
+in pursuit of a malefactor. This, he admitted, had
+wearied him a little; but this walk from the Avenue
+des Bons-Enfants to the Rue de la Condamine
+was but a spurt. Would he find that a false name
+and a false address had been given? This was but
+the infancy of art. If, however, he found that this
+Charles Breton really did live at that address and
+that he had given his true name, it would probably
+be a very simple matter to obtain all the information
+he desired of Jacques Dantin.</p>
+
+<p>"What do I risk? A short walk," thought Bernardet,
+"a little fatigue&mdash;that can be charged up
+to Profit and Loss."</p>
+
+<p>He hurried toward the street and number given.
+It was a large house, several stories high. The
+concierge was sweeping the stairs, having left a
+card bearing this inscription tacked on the front
+door. "The porter is on the staircase." Bernardet
+hastened up the stairs, found the man and
+questioned him. There was no Charles Breton in
+the house; there never had been. The man who
+sold the portrait had given a false name and address.
+Vainly did the police officer describe the
+individual who had visited Mme. Colard's shop.
+The man insisted that he had never seen any one
+who in the least resembled this toreador in the big
+felt hat. It was useless to insist! Mme. Colard
+had been deceived. And now, how to find, in this
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;155]</span>
+immense city of Paris, this bird of passage, who
+had chanced to enter the bric-a-brac shop. The
+old adage of "the needle in the haystack" came to
+Bernardet's mind and greatly irritated him. But,
+after all, there had been others whom he looked
+for; there had been others whom he had found, and
+probably he might still be able to find another trail.
+He had a collaborator who seldom failed him&mdash;Chance!
+It was destiny which often aided him.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet took an omnibus in his haste to return
+to his Chief. He was anxious to show his
+"find" to M. Leriche. When he reached the Préfecture
+he was immediately received. He unwrapped
+the portrait and showed it to M. Leriche.</p>
+
+<p>"But that is Dantin!" cried the Chief.</p>
+
+<p>"Is it not?"</p>
+
+<p>"Without doubt! Dantin when younger, but
+assuredly Dantin! And where did you dig this
+up?"</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet related his conversation with Mme.
+Colard and his fruitless visit to the Rue de la
+Condamine.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, never mind," said M. Leriche. "This discovery
+is something. The man who sold this picture
+and Dantin are accomplices. Bravo, Bernardet!
+We must let M. Ginory know."</p>
+
+<p>The Examining Magistrate was, like the Chief
+and Bernardet, struck with the resemblance of the
+portrait to Dantin. His first move would be to
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;156]</span>
+question the prisoner about the picture. He would
+go at once to Mazas. M. Leriche and Bernardet
+should accompany him. The presence of the police
+spy might be useful, even necessary.</p>
+
+<p>The Magistrate and the Chief entered a fiacre,
+while Bernardet mounted beside the driver. Bernardet
+said nothing, although the man tried to obtain
+some information from him. After one or two
+monosyllabic answers, the driver mockingly asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Are you going to the Souricière (trap) to tease
+some fat rat?"</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory and M. Leriche talked together of the
+<i>Walkyrie</i>, of Bayreuth; and the Chief asked,
+through politeness, for news about his candidature
+to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not let us talk of the Institute," the Magistrate
+replied. "It is like the beginning of a hunt;
+to sigh for the prize that brings unhappiness."</p>
+
+<p>The sombre pile, the Mazas, opened its doors to
+the three men. They traversed the long corridors,
+with the heavy air which pervaded them in spite
+of all efforts to the contrary, to a small room,
+sparsely furnished (a table, a few chairs, a glass
+bookcase), which served as an office for the Examining
+Magistrates when they had to hold any interviews
+with the prisoners.</p>
+
+<p>The guardian-in-chief walked along with M.
+Ginory, M. Leriche followed them, and Bernardet
+respectfully brought up the rear.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;157]</span>
+"Bring in Jacques Dantin!" M. Ginory ordered.
+He seated himself at the table. M.
+Leriche took a chair at one side, and Bernardet
+stood near the little bookcase, next the only window
+in the room.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Dantin soon appeared, led in by two
+guards in uniform. He was very pale, but still retained
+his haughty air and his defiant attitude.
+The Magistrate saluted him with a slight movement
+of the head, and Dantin bowed, recognizing
+in Bernardet the man with whom he had walked
+and conversed behind Rovère's funeral car.</p>
+
+<p>"Be seated, Dantin," M. Ginory said, "and explain
+to me, I beg, all you know about this portrait.
+You ought to recognize it."</p>
+
+<p>He quickly held the picture before Dantin's eyes,
+wishing to scrutinize his face to see what sudden
+emotion it would display. Seeing the portrait,
+Dantin shivered and said in a short tone: "It is
+a picture which I gave to Rovère."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said M. Ginory, "you recognize it
+then?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is my portrait," Jacques Dantin declared.
+"It was made a long time ago. Rovère kept it in
+his salon. How did it come here?"</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" again said the Magistrate. "Explain
+that to me!"</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory seemed to wish to be a little ironical.
+But Dantin roughly said:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;158]</span>
+"M. le Juge, I have nothing to explain to you.
+I understand nothing, I know nothing. Or,
+rather, I know that in your error&mdash;an error which
+you will bitterly regret some day or other, I am
+sure&mdash;you have arrested me, shut me up in Mazas;
+but that which I can assure you of is, that I have
+had nothing, do you hear, nothing whatever to do
+with the murder of my friend, and I protest with
+all my powers against your processes."</p>
+
+<p>"I comprehend that!" M. Ginory coldly replied.
+"Oh! I understand all the disagreeableness
+of being shut up within four walls. But then,
+it is very simple! In order to go out, one has only
+to give to the one who has a right to know the explanations
+which are asked. Do you still persist
+in your system? Do you still insist on keeping, I
+know not what secret, which you will not reveal to
+us?"</p>
+
+<p>"I shall keep it, Monsieur, I have reflected,"
+said Dantin. "Yes, I have reflected, and in the
+solitude to which you have forced me I have examined
+my conscience." He spoke with firmness,
+less violently than at the Palais de Justice, and
+Bernardet's penetrating little eyes never left his
+face; neither did the Magistrate's, nor the
+Chief's.</p>
+
+<p>"I am persuaded," Dantin continued, "that this
+miserable mistake cannot last long, and you will
+recognize the truth. I shall go out, at least from
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;159]</span>
+here, without having abused a confidence which
+one has placed in me and which I intend to preserve."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said M. Ginory, "perfectly, I know your
+system. You will hold to it. It is well. Now,
+whose portrait is that?"</p>
+
+<p>"It is mine!"</p>
+
+<p>"By whom do you think it was possible that it
+could have been sold in the bric-a-brac shop where
+it was found."</p>
+
+<p>"I know nothing about it. Probably by the one
+who found it or stole it from M. Rovère's apartment,
+and who is probably, without the least doubt,
+his assassin."</p>
+
+<p>"That seems very simple to you?"</p>
+
+<p>"It seems very logical."</p>
+
+<p>"Suppose that this should be the exact truth,
+that does not detract from the presumption which
+implicates you, and from Mme. Moniche's deposition,
+which charges you"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, yes, I know. The open safe, the papers
+spread out, the tête-à-tête with Rovère, when the
+concierge entered the room&mdash;that signifies nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>"For you, perhaps! For Justice it has a tragic
+signification. But let us return to the portrait.
+It was you, I suppose, who gave it to Rovère?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, it was I," Dantin responded. "Rovère
+was an amateur in art, moreover, my intimate
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;160]</span>
+friend. I had no family, I had an old friend, a
+companion of my youth, whom I thought would
+highly prize that painting. It is a fine one&mdash;it is
+by Paul Baudry."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" said M. Ginory. "P. B. Those are
+Baudry's initials?"</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly. After the war&mdash;when I had done
+my duty like others, I say this without any intention
+of defending myself&mdash;Paul Baudry was at
+Bordeaux. He was painting some portraits on
+panels, after Holbein&mdash;Edmond About's among
+others. He made mine. It is this one which I gave
+Rovère&mdash;the one you hold in your hands."</p>
+
+<p>The Magistrate looked at the small oval painting
+and M. Leriche put on his eyeglasses to examine
+the quality of the painting. A Baudry!</p>
+
+<p>"What are these scratches around the edge as
+if nails had been drawn across the places?" M.
+Ginory asked. He held out the portrait to Dantin.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know. Probably where the frame was
+taken off."</p>
+
+<p>"No, no! They are rough marks; I can see
+that. The picture has been literally torn from the
+frame. You ought to know how this panel was
+framed."</p>
+
+<p>"Very simply when I gave it to Rovère. A
+narrow gilt frame, nothing more."</p>
+
+<p>"Had Rovère changed the frame?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;161]</span>
+"I do not know. I do not remember. When I
+was at his apartment the last few times I do not
+remember to have seen the Baudry. I have
+thought of it, but I have no recollection of it."</p>
+
+<p>"Then you cannot furnish any information
+about the man who sold this portrait?"</p>
+
+<p>"None whatever!"</p>
+
+<p>"We might bring you face to face with that woman."</p>
+
+<p>"So be it! She certainly would not recognize
+me."</p>
+
+<p>"In any case, she will tell us about the man who
+brought the portrait to her."</p>
+
+<p>"She might describe him to me accurately, and
+even paint him for me," said Dantin quickly. "She
+can neither insinuate that I know him nor prove to
+you that I am his accomplice. I do not know who
+he is nor from where he comes. I was even ignorant
+of his existence myself a quarter of an hour
+ago."</p>
+
+<p>"I have only to remand you to your cell," said
+the Magistrate. "We will hunt for the other
+man."</p>
+
+<p>Dantin, in his turn, said in an ironical tone:
+"And you will do well!"</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory made a sign. The guards led out
+their prisoner. Then, looking at the Chief, while
+Bernardet still remained standing like a soldier
+near the window, the Magistrate said:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;162]</span>
+"Until there are new developments, Dantin will
+say nothing. We must look for the man in the
+sombrero."</p>
+
+<p>"Necessarily!" said M. Leriche.</p>
+
+<p>"The needle! The needle! And the hay stack!"
+thought Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>The Chief, smiling, turned toward him. "That
+belongs to you, Bernardet."</p>
+
+<p>"I know it well," said the little man, "but it is
+not easy. Oh! It is not easy at all."</p>
+
+<p>"Bah! you have unearthed more difficult things
+than that. Do it up brown! There is only one
+clew&mdash;the hat"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"They are not uncommon, those hats, Monsieur
+Leriche&mdash;they are not very bad hats. But yet it
+is a clew&mdash;if we live, we shall see."</p>
+
+<p>He stood motionless between the bookcase
+and the window, like a soldier carrying arms,
+while M. Ginory, shaking his head, said to the
+chief: "And this Dantin, what impression did he
+make on you?"</p>
+
+<p>"He is a little crack-brained!" replied the
+Chief.</p>
+
+<p>"Certainly! But guilty&mdash;you believe him
+guilty?"</p>
+
+<p>"Without doubt!"</p>
+
+<p>"Would you condemn him?" he quickly asked
+as he gazed searchingly at the Chief. M. Leriche
+hesitated.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;163]</span>
+"Would you condemn him?" M. Ginory repeated,
+insistently.</p>
+
+<p>The Chief still hesitated a moment, glanced toward
+the impassive Bernardet without being able to read
+his face, and he said:</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know."</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;164]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIII.</h3>
+
+<p>"<span class="smcap">I do</span> not know," thought Bernardet as he returned
+home. "What one knows very well indeed,
+what one cannot deny, oh, that would be impossible!
+is that on the retina of the dead man's eye, reflected
+there at the supreme moment of the agony,
+is found the image of this Dantin, his face, his
+features; this man, in a word, denounced by this
+witness which is worth all other witnesses in the
+world! This assassinated man cast a last look
+upon his murderer as he called for aid; a last cry
+for 'Help!' in the death rattle!&mdash;and this man
+says: 'I do not know!' But the dead man
+knew; and the kodak knows, also. It has no
+passion, no anger, no hate, because it registers
+what passes; fixes that which is fleeting!"</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet was obstinate in his conviction. He
+was perfectly rooted in it. What if he had not
+persisted in believing that photography would
+reveal the truth? What weighty reason, what
+even acceptable one was there which obliged
+Dantin to remain silent in the presence of the Examining
+Magistrate and his registrar&mdash;in the secret
+interview of an examination&mdash;when in order to
+escape a prison, an accusation, he had only to
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;165]</span>
+speak two words? But if Dantin said nothing,
+was it because he had nothing to say? If he had
+given no explanation, was it because he had none
+to give? An innocent man does not remain silent.
+If at the instant when M. Ginory pressed the
+ivory button the other day, if the man had been
+able to defend himself, would he not have done
+it? One knew the secret reason of criminals
+for keeping silent. Their best reason is their
+guilt.</p>
+
+<p>Only, it seemed now certain that Dantin, although
+guilty, had an accomplice. Yes, without
+doubt, the man with the sombrero, the seller
+of the portrait. Where could he now be in hiding?</p>
+
+<p>"Not easy," Bernardet repeated the words:
+"Not easy; no, not easy at all to run him out of
+his rabbit hutch."</p>
+
+<p>The Woman in Black, the visitor, would be another
+important clue. On this side the situation
+seemed a simple one. Or was this woman also an
+accomplice, and would she remain silent, hidden in
+the Province? Or would the death of Rovère
+draw her to Paris, where she might be recognized
+and become a witness for Justice?</p>
+
+<p>But the days passed. What was called the
+mystery of the Boulevard de Clichy continued to
+interest and excite the public. Violent and perplexing
+Parliamentary discussions could not distract
+attention from a crime committed in broad
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;166]</span>
+daylight, almost as one might say, in the street,
+and which made one doubt the security of the city,
+the efficiency of the police. The fall of a Ministry,
+predicted each morning and anticipated in advance,
+could not thrust aside morbid interest in this
+murder. The death of the ex-Consul was a grand
+actuality!</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Dantin thus became a dramatic personage;
+the reporters created legends about him;
+some declared him guilty and brought up in support
+of their conviction some anecdotes, some tales
+from the clubs, given as proofs; others asked if
+the suppositions were sufficiently well based to accuse
+a man in advance of trial, and these latter
+ardently took up his defense. Paul Rodier had
+even, with much dexterity and eloquence, diplomatically
+written two articles, one on either side of
+the question.</p>
+
+<p>"It is," he said to himself, "the sure way of
+having told the truth on one side or the other."</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet did not renounce for an instant the
+hope of finding the man who had sold the picture.
+It was not the first time that he had picked the
+needle from a cartful of hay. Paris is large, but
+this human sea has its particular currents, as the
+ocean has special tides, and the police officer knew
+it well. Here or there, some day he would meet
+the man, cast up by the torrent like a waif.</p>
+
+<p>First of all, the man was probably a stranger
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;167]</span>
+from some foreign land. Wearing a hat like a
+Spaniard, he had not had time to change the style
+of dress of the country from which he had come
+in search of adventures. Bernardet haunted the
+hotels, searched the registers, made conversation
+with the lodgers. He found poor persons who had
+come from foreign countries, but whose motives
+for coming to Paris were all right. Bernardet
+never stopped searching a moment; he went everywhere,
+curious and prying&mdash;and it pleased him,
+when he found a leisure evening, to go to some of
+the strange wine shops or ale houses (called cabarets)
+to find subjects for observation. These cabarets
+are very numerous on the outskirts of Montmartre,
+in the streets and boulevards at the foot of
+the Butte. Bizarre inventions, original and disagreeable
+creations, where the ingenuity of the enterprisers
+sometimes made them hideous in order
+to attract; to cater to the idle, and to hold the
+loungers from among the higher classes. Cabarets
+born of the need for novelty, which might stimulate
+the blasé; the demand for something eccentric
+almost to morbid irony. A <i>Danse Macabre</i> trod
+to the measures of an operetta; pleasantries of the
+bunglers adopting the cure-alls of the saw-bones,
+and juggling with their empty heads while dreaming
+the dreams of a Hamlet.</p>
+
+<p>Cabaret du Squelette!</p>
+
+<p>The announcement of the droll promises&mdash;apparitions,
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;168]</span>
+visions, phantoms&mdash;had often made him
+smile when he passed near there to go to the Préfecture;
+this wineshop, the front of which was bordered
+with black, like a letter announcing a death,
+and which bore, grating as it swung at the end of
+an iron rod, a red lantern for a sign.</p>
+
+<p>His little girls, when he laughingly spoke of the
+cabaret where the waiters were dressed like undertakers'
+assistants, turned pale, and plump little
+Mme. Bernardet, ordinarily smiling, would say
+with a sigh: "Is it possible that such sacrilegious
+things are permitted in the quarter?"</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet good-naturedly replied: "Ah, my
+dear, where is the harm?"</p>
+
+<p>"I know what I am talking about," his good
+wife said; "they are the pleasure of the unhealthy
+minded. They mock at death as they mock at
+everything else. Where will it all end? We shall
+see it"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Or we shall not see it," interrupted her husband,
+laughingly.</p>
+
+<p>He went in there one evening, having a little
+time to himself, as he would have gone into a
+theatre. He knew something about this Cabaret du
+Squelette (meaning the wine shop of the skeleton).
+He found the place very droll.</p>
+
+<p>A small hall which had a few months before been
+a common wine shop had been transformed into a
+lugubrious place. The walls were painted a dead
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;169]</span>
+black, and were hung with a large number of
+paintings&mdash;scenes from masked balls, gondola
+parades, serenades with a balcony scene, some of
+the lovers' rendezvous of Venice and an ideal view
+of Granada, with couples gazing at each other and
+sighing in the gondolas on the lagoons, or in the
+Andalusian courts&mdash;and in this strange place with
+its romantic pictures, souvenirs of Musset or of
+Carlo Gozzi, the tables were made in the form of
+coffins with lighted candles standing upon them,
+and the waiters were dressed as undertakers' assistants,
+with shiny black hats trimmed with crape,
+on their heads.</p>
+
+<p>"What poison will you drink before you die?"
+asked one of the creatures of Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet sat and gazed about him. A few
+"high-flyers" from the other side of Paris were
+there. Here and there a thief from that quarter
+sat alone at a table. Some elegants in white
+cravats, who had come there in correct evening
+dress, were going later, after the opera, to sup with
+some première. The police officer understood very
+well why the blasé came there. They wished to
+jog their jaded appetites; they sought to find some
+<i>piment</i>, a curry, spice to season the tameness of
+their daily existence. The coffin-shaped tables
+upon which they leaned their elbows amused them.
+Several of them had asked for a <i>bavaroise</i>, as they
+were on milk diet.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;170]</span>
+They pointed out to each other the gas flaming
+from the jets fashioned in the form of a broken
+shin-bone.</p>
+
+<p>"A little patience, my friends," said a sort of
+manager, who was dressed in deep mourning.
+"Before long we will adjourn to the Cave of
+Death!"</p>
+
+<p>The drinkers in white cravats shouted. Bernardet
+experienced, on the contrary, what Mme.
+Bernardet would have called a "creepy" sensation.
+Seasoned as he was to the bloody and villainous
+aspect of crime, he felt the instinctive shrinking of
+a healthy and level-headed bourgeois against these
+drolleries of the brain-diseased upper class and the
+pleasantries of the blasé decadents.</p>
+
+<p>At a certain moment, and after an explanation
+given by the manager, the gas was turned off, and
+the lovers in the gondolas, the guitar players, the
+singers of Spanish songs, the dancers infatuated
+with the Moulin Rouge, changed suddenly in sinister
+fashion. In place of the blond heads and rosy
+cheeks, skulls appeared; the smiles became grins
+which showed the teeth in their fleshless gums.
+The bodies, clothed in doublets, in velvets and
+satins, a moment ago, were made by some interior
+illumination to change into hideous skeletons. In
+his mocking tones the manager explained and commented
+on the metamorphosis, adding to the funeral
+spectacle the pleasantry of a buffoon.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;171]</span>
+"See! diseased Parisians, what you will be on
+Sunday!"</p>
+
+<p>The light went out suddenly; the skeletons disappeared;
+the sighing lovers in the gondolas on
+the lagoons of Venice reappeared; the Andalusian
+sweethearts again gazed into each other's eyes and
+sang their love songs. Some of the women laughed,
+but the laughs sounded constrained.</p>
+
+<p>"Droll! this city of Paris," Bernardet thought.
+He sat there, leaning back against the wall, where
+verses about death were printed among the white
+tears&mdash;as in those lodges of Free Masons where an
+outsider is shut up in order to give him time to
+make his will&mdash;when the door opened and Bernardet
+saw a tall young man of stalwart and resolute mien
+enter. A black, curly beard surrounded his pale
+face. As he entered he cast a quick glance around
+the hall, the air of which was rather thick with
+cigar smoke. He seemed to be about thirty years
+of age, and had the air of an artist, a sculptor, or a
+painter, together with something military in his
+carriage. But what suddenly struck Bernardet
+was his hat, a large gray, felt hat, with a very wide
+brim, like the sombreros which the bull fighters
+wear.</p>
+
+<p>Possibly, a few people passing through Paris
+might be found wearing such hats. But they
+would probably be rare, and in order to find the
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;172]</span>
+seller of Jacques Dantin's portrait, Bernardet had
+only this one clew.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! such a mean, little, weak, clew! But one
+must use it, just the same!" Bernardet had said.</p>
+
+<p>What if this young man with the strange hat
+was, by chance, the unknown for whom he was
+seeking? It was not at all probable. No, when
+one thought of it&mdash;not at all probable. But truth
+is sometimes made up of improbabilities, and Bernardet
+again experienced the same shock, the instinctive
+feeling that he had struck the trail, which
+he felt when the young man entered the wine shop.</p>
+
+<p>"That hat!" murmured Bernardet, sipping his
+wine and stealing glances over the rim of his glass
+at the young man. The unknown seemed to play
+directly into the police officer's hand. After standing
+by the door a few moments, and looking about
+the place, he walked over to the coffin-shaped table
+at which Bernardet was seated, bringing himself
+face to face with the officer. One of the waiters in
+his mourning dress came to take his order, and
+lighted another candle, which he placed where its
+rays fell directly on the young man's face. Thus
+Bernardet was able to study him at his ease. The
+pale face, with its expression, uneasy and slightly
+intense, struck Bernardet at once. That white
+face, with its black beard, with its gleaming eyes,
+was not to be passed by with a casual glance. The
+waiter placed a glass of brandy before him; he
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;173]</span>
+placed his elbows on the table and leaned his chin
+upon his hands. He was evidently not a habitué
+of the place nor a resident of the quarter. There
+was something foreign about his appearance. His
+glance was steady, as that of one who searches the
+horizon, looks at running water, contemplates the
+sea, asking for some "good luck" of the unknown.</p>
+
+<p>"It would be strange," thought Bernardet, "if
+a simple hat and no other clew should put us upon
+the track of the man for whom we are searching."</p>
+
+<p>At once, with the ingenuity of a master of
+dramatic art, the agent began to plot, and to put
+into action what lawyers, pleading and turning and
+twisting a cause this way and that, call <i>an effect</i>.
+He waited until the manager informed them that
+they were about to pass into the Cave of Death,
+and gave them all an invitation into the adjoining
+hall; then, profiting by the general movement, he
+approached the unknown, and, almost shoulder to
+shoulder, he walked along beside him, through a
+narrow, dark passage to a little room, where, on a
+small stage stood, upright, an empty coffin.</p>
+
+<p>It was a doleful spectacle, which the Cabaret du
+Squelette (the wine shop of the skeleton) offered to
+its clientèle of idle loungers and morbid curiosity
+seekers attracted to its halls by these exhibitions.
+Bernardet knew it all very well, and he knew by
+just what play of lights, what common chemical
+illuminations, they gave to the lookers on the sinister
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;174]</span>
+illusion of the decomposition of a corpse in
+its narrow home. This phantasmagoria, to which
+the people from the Boulevard came, in order to be
+amused, he had seen many times in the little
+theatres in the fairs at Neuilly. The proprietor
+of the cabaret had explained it to him; he had been
+curious and very keen about it, and so he followed
+the crowd into this little hall, to look once more at
+the image of a man in the coffin. He knew well to
+what purpose he could put it. The place was full.
+Men and women were standing about; the black
+walls made the narrow place look still smaller.
+Occasional bizarre pleasantries were heard and
+nervous laughs rang out. Why is it, that no matter
+how sceptical people may be, the idea, the proximity,
+the appearance of death gives them an impression
+of uneasiness, a singular sensation which
+is often displayed in nervous laughs or sepulchral
+drolleries?</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet had not left the side of the young man
+with the gray felt hat. He could see his face distinctly
+in the light of the little hall, and could
+study it at his ease. In the shadows which lurked
+about them the young man's face seemed like a
+white spot. The officer's sharp eyes never left it
+for a moment.</p>
+
+<p>The manager now asked if some one would try
+the experiment. This was to step into the open
+coffin&mdash;that box, as he said&mdash;"from which your
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;175]</span>
+friends, your neighbors, can see you dematerialize
+and return to nothingness."</p>
+
+<p>"Come, my friends," he continued, in his ironical
+tones, "this is a fine thing; it will permit your
+best friends to see you deliquesce! Are there any
+married people here? It is only a question of
+tasting, in advance, the pleasures of a widowhood.
+Would you like to see your husband disappear, my
+sister? My brother, do you wish to see your wife
+decompose? Sacrifice yourselves, I beg of you!
+Come! Come up here! Death awaits you!"</p>
+
+<p>They laughed, but here and there a laugh sounded
+strident or hysterical; the laugh did not ring true,
+but had the sound of cracked crystal. No one
+stirred. This parody of death affected even these
+hardened spectators.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well, my friends, there is a cadaver belonging
+to the establishment which we can use. It is
+a pity! You may readily understand that we do
+not take the dead for companions."</p>
+
+<p>As no one among the spectators would enter the
+coffin, the manager, with a gesture, ordered one of
+the supernumeraries of the cabaret to enter; from
+an open door the figurant glided across the stage
+and entered the coffin, standing upright. The
+manager wrapped him about with a shroud, leaving
+only the pale face of the pretended dead man exposed
+above this whiteness. The man smiled.</p>
+
+<p>"He laughs, Messieurs, he laughs still!" said
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;176]</span>
+the manager. "You will soon see him pay for
+that laugh. '<i>Rome rit et mourut!</i>' as Bossuet
+said."</p>
+
+<p>Some of the audience shouted applause to this
+quotation from a famous author. Bernardet did
+not listen; he was studying from a corner of his
+eye his neighbor's face. The man gazed with a
+sort of fascination at this fantastic performance
+which was taking place before him. He frowned,
+he bit his lips; his eyes were almost ferocious in
+expression. The figurant in the coffin continued
+to laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"Look! look keenly!" went on the manager,
+"you will see your brother dematerialize after becoming
+changed in color. The flesh will disappear
+and you will see his skeleton. Think, think, my
+brothers, this is the fate which awaits you, perhaps,
+soon, on going away from here; think of the
+various illnesses and deaths by accidents which
+await you! Contemplate the magic spectacle offered
+by the Cabaret du Squelette and remember
+that you are dust and that to dust you must return!
+Make, wisely, this reflection, which the intoxicated
+man made to another man in like condition,
+but asleep. 'And that is how I shall be on
+Sunday!' While waiting, my brothers and sisters,
+for nothingness, look at the dematerialization of
+your contemporary if you please!"</p>
+
+<p>The play of lights, while the man was talking,
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;177]</span>
+began to throw a greenish pallor and to make spots
+at first transparent upon the orbits of the eyes,
+then, little by little, the spots seemed to grow
+stronger, to blacken, to enlarge. The features,
+lightly picked out, appeared to change gradually,
+to take on gray and confused tints, to slowly disappear
+as under a veil, a damp vapor which covered,
+devoured that face, now unrecognizable! It has
+been said that the manner in which this phenomenon
+was managed was a remarkable thing; it is
+true, for this human body seemed literally to dissolve
+before this curious crowd, now become silent
+and frightened. The work of death was accomplished
+there publicly, thanks to the illusion of
+lighting. The livid man who smiled a few moments
+before was motionless, fixed, then passing
+through some singular changes, the flesh seemed to
+fall from him in&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Suddenly the play of lights made him disappear
+from the eyes of the spectators and they saw,
+thanks to reflections made by mirrors, only a skeleton.
+It was the world of spectres and the secret
+of the tombs revealed to the crowd by a kind of
+scientific magic lantern.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet did not desire to wait longer to strike
+his blow&mdash;this was the exact moment to do it&mdash;the
+psychological moment!</p>
+
+<p>The eager look of the man in the sombrero revealed
+a deep trouble. There was in this look
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;178]</span>
+something more than the curiosity excited by a
+novel spectacle. The muscles of his pale face
+twitched as with physical suffering; in his eyes
+Bernardet read an internal agony.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" thought the police officer, "the living
+eye is a book which one can read, as well as a dead
+man's eye."</p>
+
+<p>Upon the stage the lights were rendering even
+more sinister the figurant who was giving to this
+morbidly curious crowd the comedy of death. One
+would have now thought it was one of those atrocious
+paintings made in the studios of certain
+Spanish painters in the <i>putridero</i> of a Valles Leal.
+The flesh, by a remarkable scientific combination
+of lights, was made to seem as if falling off, and
+presented the horrible appearance of a corpse in a
+state of decomposition. The lugubrious vision
+made a very visible shudder pass over the audience.
+Then Bernardet, drawing himself up to his full
+height so as to get a good view of the face of this
+man so much taller, and approaching as near to
+him as possible, in fact, so that his elbow and upper
+arm touched the young man's, he slowly, deliberately
+dropped, one by one, these words:</p>
+
+<p>"That is about how M. Rovère ought to be
+now"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>And suddenly the young man's face expressed a
+sensation of fright, as one sees in the face of a pedestrian
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;179]</span>
+who suddenly finds that he is about to step
+upon a viper.</p>
+
+<p>"Or how he will be soon!" added the little man,
+with an amiable smile. Bernardet dissimulated
+under this amiability an intense joy. Holding his
+arm and elbow in an apparently careless manner
+close to his neighbor as he pronounced Rovère's
+name, Bernardet felt his neighbor's whole body
+tremble, and that he gave a very perceptible start.
+Why had he been so quickly moved by an unknown
+name if it had not recalled to his mind some
+frightful thought? The man might, of course,
+know, as the public did, all the details of the crime,
+but, with his strong, energetic face, his resolute
+look, he did not appear like a person who would be
+troubled by the recital of a murder, the description
+of a bloody affray, or even by the frightful scene
+which had just passed before his eyes in the
+hall.</p>
+
+<p>"A man of that stamp is not chicken-hearted,"
+thought Bernardet. "No! no!" Hearing those
+words evoked the image of the dead man, Rovère;
+the man was not able to master his violent emotion,
+and he trembled, as if under an electrical discharge.
+The shudder had been violent, of short duration,
+however, as if he had mastered his emotion by his
+strong will. In his involuntary movement he had
+displayed a tragic eloquence. Bernardet had seen
+in the look, in the gesture, in the movement of the
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;180]</span>
+man's head, something of trouble, of doubt, of
+terror, as in a flash of lightning in the darkness of
+night one sees the bottom of a pool.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet smilingly said to him:</p>
+
+<p>"This sight is not a gay one!"</p>
+
+<p>"No," the man answered, and he also attempted
+to smile.</p>
+
+<p>He looked back to the stage, where the sombre
+play went on.</p>
+
+<p>"That poor Rovère!" Bernardet said.</p>
+
+<p>The other man now looked at Bernardet as if to
+read his thoughts and to learn what signification
+the repetition of the same name had. Bernardet
+sustained, with a naïve look, this mute interrogation.
+He allowed nothing of his thoughts to be
+seen in the clear, childlike depths of his eyes. He
+had the air of a good man, frightened by a terrible
+murder, and who spoke of the late victim as if he
+feared for himself. He waited, hoping that the man
+would speak.</p>
+
+<p>In some of Bernardet's readings he had come
+across the magic rule applicable to love: "Never
+go! Wait for the other to come!"&mdash;"<i>Nec ire, fac
+venire</i>"&mdash;applicable also to hate, to that duel of
+magnetism between the hunted man and the police
+spy, and Bernardet waited for the other to "come!"</p>
+
+<p>Brusquely, after a silence, while on the little
+stage the transformation was still going on, the man
+asked in a dry tone:</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;181]</span>
+"Why do you speak to me of M. Rovère?"</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet affably replied: "I? Because every
+one talks of it. It is the actuality of the moment.
+I live in that quarter. It was quite near there
+that it happened, the affair"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"I know!" interrupted the other.</p>
+
+<p>The unknown had not pronounced ten words in
+questioning and replying, and yet Bernardet found
+two clues simply insignificant&mdash;terrible in reality.
+"I know!" was the man's reply, in a short tone,
+as if he wished to push aside, to thrust away, a
+troublesome thought. The tone, the sound of the
+words, had struck Bernardet. But one word especially&mdash;the
+word Monsieur before Rovère's name.
+"Monsieur Rovère? Why did he speak to me of
+Monsieur Rovère?" Bernardet thought.</p>
+
+<p>It seemed, then, that he knew the dead man.</p>
+
+<p>All the people gathered in this little hall, if
+asked in regard to this murder would have said:
+"Rovère!" "The Rovère affair!" "The Rovère
+murder!" Not one who had not known the victim
+would have said:</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Rovère!"</p>
+
+<p>The man knew him then. This simple word, in
+the officer's opinion, meant much.</p>
+
+<p>The manager now announced that, having become
+a skeleton, the dear brother who had lent
+himself to this experiment would return to his
+natural state, "fresher and rosier than before."
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;182]</span>
+He added, pleasantly, "A thing which does not
+generally happen to ordinary skeletons!"</p>
+
+<p>This vulgar drollery caused a great laugh, which
+the audience heartily indulged in. It made an outlet
+for their pent-up feelings, and they all felt as if
+they had awakened from a nightmare. The man
+in the sombrero, whose pale face was paler than
+before, was the only one who did not smile. He
+even frowned fiercely (noted by Bernardet) when
+the manager added:</p>
+
+<p>"You are not in the habit of seeing a dead man
+resuscitated the next day. Between us, it would
+keep the world pretty full."</p>
+
+<p>"Evidently," thought Bernardet, "my young
+gentleman is ill at ease."</p>
+
+<p>His only thought was to find out his name, his
+personality, to establish his identity and to learn
+where he had spent his life, and especially his last
+days. But how?</p>
+
+<p>He did not hesitate long. He left the place,
+even before the man in the coffin had reappeared,
+smiling at the audience. He glided through the
+crowd, repeating, "Pardon!" "I beg pardon!"
+traversed rapidly the hall where newcomers were
+conversing over their beverages, and stepped out
+into the street, looked up and down. A light fog
+enveloped everything, and the gaslights and lights
+in the shop windows showed ghostly through it.
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;183]</span>
+The passers-by, the cabs, the tramways, bore a
+spectral look.</p>
+
+<p>What Bernardet was searching for was a policeman.
+He saw two chatting together and walking
+slowly along under the leafless trees. In three
+steps, at each step turning his head to watch the
+people coming out of the cabaret, he reached the
+men. While speaking to them he did not take his
+eyes from the door of that place where he had left
+the young man in the gray felt hat.</p>
+
+<p>"Dagonin," he said, "you must follow me, if you
+please, and 'pull me in!' I am going to pick a
+drunken quarrel with a particular person. Interfere
+and arrest us both. Understand?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly," Dagonin replied.</p>
+
+<p>He looked at his comrade, who carried his hand
+to his shako and saluted Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>The little man who had given his directions in a
+quick tone, was already far away. He stood near
+the door of the cabaret gazing searchingly at each
+person who came out. The looks he cast were
+neither direct, menacing nor even familiar. He
+had pulled his hat down to his eyebrows, and he
+cast side glances at the crowd pouring from the
+door of the wine shop.</p>
+
+<p>He was astonished that the man in the sombrero
+had not yet appeared. Possibly he had stopped,
+on his way out, in the front hall. Glancing through
+the open door, Bernardet saw that he was right.
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;184]</span>
+The young man was seated at one of those coffin-shaped
+oaken tables, with a glass of greenish liquor
+before him. "He needs alcohol to brace him up,"
+growled the officer.</p>
+
+<p>The door was shut again.</p>
+
+<p>"I can wait till he has finished his absinthe,"
+said Bernardet to himself.</p>
+
+<p>He had not long to wait. After a small number
+of persons had left the place, the door opened and
+the man in the gray felt hat appeared, stopped on
+the threshold, and, as Bernardet had done, scanned
+the horizon and the street. Bernardet turned his
+back and seemed to be walking away from the
+wine shop, leaving the man free. With a keen
+glance or two over his shoulder toward him, Bernardet
+crossed the street and hurried along at a
+rapid pace, in order to gain on the young man, and
+by this man&oelig;uvre to find himself directly in front
+of the unknown. The man seemed to hesitate,
+walked quickly down the Boulevard a few steps
+toward the Place Pigalle, in the direction where
+Rovère's apartments were, but suddenly stopped,
+turned on his heel, repassed the Cabaret du Squelette,
+and went toward the Moulin Rouge, which at
+first, Bernardet thought, he was about to enter.
+As he stood there the vanes of the Moulin Rouge,
+turning about, lighted up the windows of the opposite
+buildings and made them look as if they
+were on fire. At last, obeying another impulse, he
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;185]</span>
+suddenly crossed the Boulevard, as if to return into
+Paris, leaving Montmartre, the cabarets, and
+Rovère's house behind him. He walked briskly
+along, and ran against a man&mdash;a little man&mdash;whom
+he had not noticed, who seemed to suddenly detach
+himself from the wall, and who fell against
+his breast, hiccoughing and cursing in vicious
+tones.</p>
+
+<p>"Imbecile!"</p>
+
+<p>The young man wished to push away the intoxicated
+man who, with hat over his eyes, clung to
+him and kept repeating:</p>
+
+<p>"The street&mdash;the street&mdash;is it not free&mdash;the
+street?"</p>
+
+<p>Yes, it was certainly a drunken man. Not a man
+in a smock, but a little fellow, a bourgeois, with hat
+askew and thick voice.</p>
+
+<p>"I&mdash;I am not stopping you. The street is free&mdash;I
+tell you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Well, if it is free, I want it!"</p>
+
+<p>The voice was vigorous, but showed sudden anger,
+a strident tone, a slight foreign accent, Spanish,
+perhaps.</p>
+
+<p>The drunken man probably thought him insolent
+for, still hiccoughing, he answered:</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, you want it, do you? You want it? I
+want it! The king says 'we wish!' don't you
+know?"</p>
+
+<p>With another movement, he lost his equilibrium
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;186]</span>
+and half fell, his head hanging over, and
+he clutched the man he held in a sudden embrace.</p>
+
+<p>"It is mine also&mdash;the street&mdash;you know!"</p>
+
+<p>With sudden violence, the man disembarrassed
+himself of this caressing creature; he thrust aside
+his clinging arms with a movement so quick and
+strong that the intoxicated man, this time, fell, his
+hat rolled into the gutter, and he lay on the sidewalk.</p>
+
+<p>But immediately, with a bound, he was on his
+feet, and as the man went calmly on his way, he
+followed him, seized his coat and clutched him so
+tightly that he could not proceed.</p>
+
+<p>"Pardon;" he said, "you cannot go away like
+that!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, as the light from a gas lamp fell on
+the little man's face, the young man recognized
+his neighbor of the cabaret, who had said to
+him:</p>
+
+<p>"See, that is how Rovère must look!"</p>
+
+<p>At this moment, Dagonin and his comrade appeared
+on the scene and laid vigorous hands on
+them both; the young man made a quick, instinctive
+movement toward his right pocket, where,
+no doubt, he kept a revolver or knife. Bernardet
+seized his wrist, he twisted it and said:</p>
+
+<p>"Do nothing rash!"</p>
+
+<p>The young man was very strong, but the huge
+Dagonin had Herculean biceps and the other man
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;187]</span>
+did not lack muscles. Fright, moreover, seemed
+to paralyze this tall, young gallant, who, as he saw
+that he was being hustled toward a police station,
+demanded:</p>
+
+<p>"Have you arrested me, and why?"</p>
+
+<p>"First for having struck me," Bernardet replied,
+still bareheaded, and to whom a gamin now
+handed his soiled hat, saying to him:</p>
+
+<p>"Is this yours, Monsieur Bernardet?"</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet recognized in his own quarter! That
+was glory!</p>
+
+<p>The man seemed to wish to defend himself and
+still struggled, but one remark of Dagonin's seemed
+to pacify him:</p>
+
+<p>"No rebellion! There is nothing serious about
+your arrest. Do not make it worse."</p>
+
+<p>The young man really believed that it was
+only a slight matter and he would be liberated at
+once. The only thing that disquieted him was
+that this intoxicated man, suddenly become sober,
+had spoken to him as he did a few moments before
+in the cabaret.</p>
+
+<p>The four men walked quickly along in the
+shadow of the buildings, through the almost deserted
+streets, where the shopkeepers were putting
+out their lights and closing up their shops.
+Scarcely any one who met them would have realized
+that three of these men were taking the
+fourth to a police station.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;188]</span>
+A tri-color flag floated over a door lighted by a
+red lantern; the four men entered the place and
+found themselves in a narrow, warm hall, where
+the agents of the police were either sleeping on
+benches or reading around the stove by the light
+of the gas jets above their heads.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet, looking dolefully at his broken and
+soiled hat, begged the young man to give his name
+and address to the Chief of the Post. The young
+man then quickly understood that his questioner
+of the Cabaret du Squelette had caught him in a
+trap. He looked at him with an expression of
+violent anger&mdash;of concentrated rage.</p>
+
+<p>Then he said:</p>
+
+<p>"My name? What do you want of that? I am
+an honest man. Why did you arrest me? What
+does it mean?"</p>
+
+<p>"Your name?" repeated Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>The man hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well! I am called Pradès. Does that help
+you any?"</p>
+
+<p>The man wrote: "Pradès. P-r-a-d-è-s with an
+accent. Pradès. First name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Charles, if you wish!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said Bernardet, noticing the slight difference
+in the tone of his answer. "We wish
+nothing. We wish only the truth."</p>
+
+<p>"I have told it."</p>
+
+<p>Charles Pradès furnished some further information
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;189]</span>
+in regard to himself. He was staying at a
+hotel in the Rue de Paradis-Poissonsière, a small
+hotel used by commercial travelers and merchants
+of the second class. He had been in Paris only a
+month.</p>
+
+<p>Where was he from? He said that he came from
+Sydney, where he was connected with a commercial
+house. Or rather he had given up the situation
+to come to Paris to seek his fortune. But
+while speaking of Sydney he had in his rather
+rambling answers let fall the name of Buenos
+Ayres, and Bernardet remembered that Buenos
+Ayres was the place where M. Rovère had been
+French Consul. The officer paid no attention to
+this at the time. For what good? Pradès's real
+examination would be conducted by M. Ginory.
+He, Bernardet, was not an examining magistrate.
+He was the ferret who hunted out criminals.</p>
+
+<p>This Pradès was stupefied, then furious, when,
+the examination over, he learned that he was not
+to be immediately set at liberty.</p>
+
+<p>What! An absurd quarrel, a collision without a
+wound, in a street in Paris, was sufficient to hold a
+man and make him pass the night in the station
+house, with all the vagabonds of both sexes collected
+there!</p>
+
+<p>"You may bemoan your fate to yourself to-morrow
+morning!" said Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>In the meantime they searched this man, who,
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;190]</span>
+very pale, making visibly powerful efforts to control
+himself, biting his lips and his black beard,
+while they examined his pocketbook, while they
+looked at a Spanish knife with a short blade, which
+he had (Bernardet had divined it at the time of his
+arrest) in his right pocket.</p>
+
+<p>The pocketbook revealed nothing. It contained
+some receipted weekly bills of the hotel in the Rue
+de Paradis, some envelopes without letters, without
+stamps and bearing the name, "Charles
+Pradès, Merchant," two bank bills of 100 francs&mdash;nothing
+more.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet very simply asked Pradès how it was
+that he had upon his person addressed letters
+which he evidently had not received, as they were
+not stamped. He replied:</p>
+
+<p>"They are not letters. They are addresses
+which I gave instead of visiting cards, as I had not
+had time to procure cards."</p>
+
+<p>"Then the addresses are in your writing?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," Pradès answered.</p>
+
+<p>The police officer looked at them again; then,
+saluting the brigadier and his men, wished them
+good-night, and even added a little gesture, rather
+mocking, in the direction of the arrested man.
+Pradès made an angry, almost menacing, movement
+toward Bernardet. The guards standing
+about pulled him back, while the plump, smiling
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;191]</span>
+little man, caressing his sandy mustache and humming
+a tune, went out into the street.</p>
+
+<p>As he reached the passage which led to his house
+this couplet came merrily from his lips as walked
+quickly along:</p>
+
+<p>
+"Prends ton fusil, Gregoire,<br />
+Prends ta gourde pourboire,<br />
+Nos Messieurs sont partis<br />
+A la chasse aux perdrix."<br />
+</p>
+
+<p>One would have taken M. Bernardet for a happy
+little bourgeois, going home from some theatre
+through the deserted streets and repeating a verse
+from some vaudeville, rather than a police spy who
+had just secured a prize. He walked quickly, he
+walked gaily. He reached his home, where Mme.
+Bernardet, always rosy and pleasant, awaited him,
+and where his three little girls were sleeping. He
+felt that, like the Roman emperor, he had not lost
+his day.</p>
+
+<p>He again hummed the quatrain, and, although
+not in a loud tone, still it sounded like a far off
+fanfare of victory in the gray fog of this Paris
+night.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;192]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XIV.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">M. Ginory</span> was not without uneasiness when he
+thought of the detention of Jacques Dantin. Without
+doubt, all prisoners, all accused persons are
+reticent; they try to hide their guilt under voluntary
+silence. They do not speak, because they
+have sworn not to. They are bound, one knows
+not by whom, by an oath which they cannot break.
+It is the ordinary system of the guilty who cannot
+defend themselves. Mystery seems to them
+safety.</p>
+
+<p>But Dantin, intimately acquainted with Rovère's
+life, might be acquainted with some secret which
+he could not disclose and which did not pertain to
+him at all. What secret? Had not an examining
+magistrate a right to know everything? Had not
+an accused man a right to speak? Either Dantin
+had nothing to reveal and he was playing a comedy
+and was guilty, or, if by a few words, by a confidence
+made to the magistrate he could escape an
+accusation, recover his liberty, without doubt he
+would speak after having kept an inexplicable silence.
+How could one suppose that an innocent
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;193]</span>
+man would hold, for a long time, to this mute
+system?</p>
+
+<p>The discovery of the portrait in Mme. Colard's
+shop ought, naturally, to give to the affair a new
+turn. The arrest of Charles Pradès brought an
+important element to these researches. He would
+be examined by M. Ginory the next morning, after
+having been questioned by the Commissary of
+Police.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet, spruce, freshly shaven, was there,
+and seemed in his well-brushed redingote, like a
+little abbé come to assist at some curious ceremony.</p>
+
+<p>On the contrary, Pradès, after a sleepless night,
+a night of agony, paler than the evening before, his
+face fierce and its muscles contracted, had a haggard
+expression, and he blinked his eyes like a
+night bird suddenly brought into glaring sunlight.
+He repeated before the Examining Magistrate what
+he had said to the brigadier. But his voice, vibrant
+a few hours before, had become heavy, almost
+raucous, as the haughty expression of his face had
+become sullen and tragic.</p>
+
+<p>The Examining Magistrate had cited Mme.
+Colard, the shopkeeper, to appear before him.
+She instantly recognized in this Pradès the
+man who had sold her the little panel by Paul
+Baudry.</p>
+
+<p>He denied it. He did not know of what they
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;194]</span>
+were talking. He had never seen this woman. He
+knew nothing about any portrait.</p>
+
+<p>"It belonged to M. Rovère," the magistrate replied,
+"M. Rovère, the murdered man; M.
+Rovère, who was consul at Buenos Ayres, and you
+spoke, yesterday, of Buenos Ayres, in the examination
+at the station house in the Rue de la Rochefoucauld."</p>
+
+<p>"M. Rovère? Buenos Ayres?" repeated the
+young man, rolling his sombrero around his fingers.</p>
+
+<p>He repeated that he did not know the ex-Consul,
+that he had never been in South America, that he
+had come from Sydney.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet, at this moment, interrupted him by
+taking his hat from him without saying a word,
+and Pradès cast a very angry look at the little
+man.</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory understood Bernardet's move and
+approved with a smile. He looked in the inside
+of the sombrero which Bernardet handed to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>The hat bore the address of Gordon, Smithson &amp;
+Co., Berner Street, London.</p>
+
+<p>"But, after all," thought the Magistrate,
+"Buenos Ayres is one of the markets for English
+goods."</p>
+
+<p>"That is a hat bought at Sydney," Pradès
+(who had understood) explained.</p>
+
+<p>Before the bold, decided, almost violent affirmations
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;195]</span>
+which Mme. Colard made that this was
+certainly the seller of the portrait, the young
+man lost countenance a little. He kept saying
+over and over: "You deceive yourself. Madame,
+I have never spoken to you, I have never seen
+you."</p>
+
+<p>When M. Ginory asked her if she still persisted
+in saying that this was the man who had sold her
+the picture, she said:</p>
+
+<p>"Do I still persist? With my neck under the
+guillotine I would persist," and she kept repeating:
+"I am sure of it! I am sure of it!"</p>
+
+<p>This preliminary examination brought about no
+decisive result. It was certain that, if this portrait
+had been in the possession of this young man
+and been sold by him, that he, Charles Pradès,
+was an accomplice of Dantin's, if not the author of
+the crime. They ought, then, to be brought face
+to face, and, possibly, this might bring about an
+immediate result. And why not have this meeting
+take place at once, before Pradès was sent where
+Dantin was, at Mazas?</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory, who had uttered this word "Mazas,"
+noticed the expression of terror which flashed
+across and suddenly transfigured the young man's
+face.</p>
+
+<p>Pradès stammered:</p>
+
+<p>"Then&mdash;you will hold me? Then&mdash;I am not
+free?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;196]</span>
+M. Ginory did not reply. He gave an order
+that this Pradès should be guarded until the arrival
+of Dantin from Mazas.</p>
+
+<p>In Mazas, in that walled prison, in the cell which
+had already made him ill, Jacques Dantin sat.
+This man, with the trooper's air, seemed almost to
+be in a state of collapse. When the guard came to
+his cell he drew himself up and endeavored to collect
+all his energy; and when the door was opened
+and he was called he appeared quite like himself.
+When he saw the prison wagon which had brought
+him to Mazas and now awaited to take him to
+the Palais de Justice he instinctively recoiled;
+then, recovering himself, he entered the narrow
+vehicle.</p>
+
+<p>The idea, the sensation that he was so near all
+this life&mdash;yet so far&mdash;that he was going through
+these streets, filled with carriages, with men and
+women who were free, gave him a desperate, a
+nervous sense of irritation.</p>
+
+<p>The air which they breathed, he breathed and felt
+fan his brow&mdash;but through a grating. They arrived
+at the Palais and Jacques Dantin recognized
+the staircases which he had previously mounted,
+that led to the Examining Magistrate's room. He
+entered the narrow room where M. Ginory awaited
+him. Dantin saluted the Magistrate with a gesture
+which, though courteous, seemed to have a little
+bravado in it; as a salutation with a sword before
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;197]</span>
+a duel. Then he glanced around, astonished to
+see, between two guards, a man whom he did not
+recognize.</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory studied them. If he knew this
+Pradès, who also curiously returned his look,
+Jacques Dantin was a great comedian, because no
+indication, not the slightest involuntary shudder,
+not the faintest trace of an expression of having
+seen him before, crossed his face. Even M. Ginory's
+keen eyes could detect nothing. He had asked that
+Bernardet be present at the meeting, and the little
+man's face, become serious, almost severe, was
+turned, with eager interrogation in its expression,
+toward Dantin. Bernardet also was unable to detect
+the faintest emotion which could be construed
+into an acknowledgment of ever having seen this
+young man before. Generally prisoners would, unconsciously,
+permit a gesture, a glance, a something,
+to escape them when they were brusquely
+confronted, unexpectedly, with some accomplice.
+This time not a muscle of Dantin's face moved, not
+an eyelash quivered.</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory motioned Jacques Dantin to a seat
+directly in front of him, where the light would fall
+full upon his face. Pointing out Pradès, he
+asked:</p>
+
+<p>"Do you recognize this man?"</p>
+
+<p>Dantin, after a second or two, replied:</p>
+
+<p>"No; I have never seen him."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;198]</span>
+"Never?"</p>
+
+<p>"I believe not; he is unknown to me!"</p>
+
+<p>"And you, Pradès, have you ever seen Jacques
+Dantin?"</p>
+
+<p>"Never," said Pradès, in his turn. His voice
+seemed hoarse, compared with the brief, clear response
+made by Dantin.</p>
+
+<p>"He is, however, the original of the portrait
+which you sold to Mme. Colard."</p>
+
+<p>"The portrait?"</p>
+
+<p>"Look sharply at Dantin. Look at him well,"
+repeated M. Ginory. "You must recognize that
+he is the original of the portrait in question."</p>
+
+<p>"Yes;" Pradès replied. His eyes were fixed
+upon the prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah!" the Magistrate joyously exclaimed, asking:
+"And how, tell me, did you so quickly recognize
+the original of the portrait which you saw only
+an instant in my room?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not know," stammered Pradès, not comprehending
+the gravity of a question put in an insinuating,
+almost amiable tone.</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, well!" continued M. Ginory, still in a conciliating
+tone, "I am going to explain to you.
+It is certain that you recognize these features,
+because you had a long time in which to contemplate
+them; because you had it a long time in
+your hands when you were trying to pull off the
+frame."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;199]</span>
+"The frame? What frame?" asked the young
+man stupefied, not taking his eyes from the Magistrate's
+face, which seemed to him endowed with
+some occult power. M. Ginory went on:</p>
+
+<p>"The frame which you had trouble in removing,
+since the scratches show in the wood. And what
+if, after taking the portrait to Mme. Colard's shop,
+we should find the frame in question at another
+place, at some other shop&mdash;that would not be very
+difficult," and M. Ginory smiled at Bernardet.
+"What if we could add another new deposition to
+that of Mme. Colard's? Yes; what if to that clear,
+decisive deposition we could add another&mdash;what
+would you have to say?"</p>
+
+<p>Silence! Pradès turned his head around, his
+eyes wandered about, as if searching to find an outlet
+or a support; gasping like a man who has been
+injured.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Dantin looked at him at the same moment
+when the Magistrate, with a glance keener,
+more piercing than ever, seemed to search his very
+soul. The young man was now pallid and unmanned.</p>
+
+<p>At length Pradès pronounced some words. What
+did he want of him? What frame was he talking
+of? And who was this other dealer of whom the
+Magistrate spoke and whom he had called a second
+time? Where was this witness with "the new
+deposition?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;200]</span>
+"One is enough!" he said, casting a ferocious
+look at Mme. Colard, who, on a sign from M. Ginory,
+had entered, pale and full of fear.</p>
+
+<p>He added in a menacing tone:</p>
+
+<p>"One is even too much!"</p>
+
+<p>The fingers of his right hand contracted, as if
+around a knife handle. At this moment Bernardet,
+who was studying each gesture which the man
+made, was convinced that the murderer of Rovère
+was there. He saw that hand armed with the
+knife, the one which had been found in his pocket,
+striking his victim, gashing the ex-Consul's
+throat.</p>
+
+<p>But then, "Dantin?" An accomplice, without
+doubt. The head, of which the adventurer was the
+arm. Because, in the dead man's eye, Dantin's
+image appeared, reflected as clear proof, like an accusation,
+showing the person who was last seen in
+Rovère's supreme agony. Jacques Dantin was
+there&mdash;the eye spoke.</p>
+
+<p>Mme. Colard's testimony no longer permitted
+M. Ginory to doubt. This Charles Pradès was
+certainly the man who sold the portrait.</p>
+
+<p>Nothing could be proved except that the two
+men had never met. No sign of emotion showed
+that Dantin had ever seen the young man before.
+The latter alone betrayed himself when he was
+going to Mazas with the original of the portrait
+painted by Baudry.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;201]</span>
+But, however, as the Magistrate underlined it
+with precision, the fact alone of recognizing Dantin
+constituted against Pradès a new charge. Added
+to the testimony, to the formal affirmation of the
+shopkeeper, this charge became grave.</p>
+
+<p>Coldly, M. Ginory said to his registrar:</p>
+
+<p>"An order!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, when Favarel had taken a paper engraved
+at the top, which Pradès tried to decipher, the
+Magistrate began to question him. And as M.
+Ginory spoke slowly, Favarel filled in the blank
+places which made a free man, a prisoner.</p>
+
+<p>"You are called?" demanded M. Ginory.</p>
+
+<p>"Pradès."</p>
+
+<p>"Your first name?"</p>
+
+<p>"Henri."</p>
+
+<p>"You said Charles to the Commissary of Police."</p>
+
+<p>"Henri-Charles&mdash;Charles&mdash;Henri."</p>
+
+<p>The Magistrate did not even make a sign to
+Favarel, seated before the table, and who wrote
+very quickly without M. Ginory dictating to
+him.</p>
+
+<p>"Your profession?" continued the Magistrate.</p>
+
+<p>"Commission merchant."</p>
+
+<p>"Your age?"</p>
+
+<p>"Twenty-eight."</p>
+
+<p>"Your residence?"</p>
+
+<p>"Sydney, Australia."</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;202]</span>
+And, upon this official paper, the replies were
+filled in, one by one, in the blank places:</p>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p class="center"><span class="smcap">Court of the First Instance of the Department Of
+the Seine:</span></p>
+
+<table style="width:90%;" border="0" summary="warrant checklist">
+<tr>
+<td style="width: 50%">
+
+<p class="hangindent">Warrant of Commitment
+against Pradès.</p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Note.&mdash;Write exactly the
+names, Christian names, professions,
+age, residence and
+nature of charge.</p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Description<br />
+Height metre<br />
+centimetres</p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Forehead<br />
+Nose</p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Eyes<br />
+Mouth</p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Chin<br />
+Eyebrows</p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">Hair</p>
+
+<p class="hangindent">General Appearance</p>
+</td>
+
+<td style="width: 1%"></td>
+
+<td style="width: 30%">
+<p>We, Edmé-Armand-Georges
+Ginory, Examining Magistrate
+of the Court of the
+First Instance of the Department
+of the Seine, command
+and enjoin all officers and
+guards of the Public Force
+to conduct to the Prison of
+Detention, called the Mazas,
+in conformity to the Law,
+Pradès (Charles Henri), aged
+28 years, Commission Merchant
+from Sydney. Accused
+of complicity in the murder
+of Louis-Pièrre Rovère. We
+direct the Director of said
+house of detention to receive
+and hold him till further orders.
+We command every
+man in the Public to lend
+assistance in order to execute
+the present order, in case such
+necessity arises, to which we
+attach our name and seal.</p>
+
+<p>Made at the Palais de Justice,
+in Paris, the 12th of
+February, 1896.</p>
+</td>
+  </tr>
+</table>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>And below, the seal was attached to the order by
+the registrar. M. Ginory signed it, saying to Favarel:</p>
+
+<p>"The description must be left blank. They will
+fill it out after the measurements are taken."</p>
+
+<p>Then, Pradès, stupefied till now, not seeming to
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;203]</span>
+realize half that was passing around him, gave a
+sudden, violent start. A cry burst from him.</p>
+
+<p>"Arrested! Have you arrested me?"</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory leaned over the table. He was calm
+and held his pen with which he had signed the order,
+suspended in the air. The young man rushed
+forward wild with anger, and if the guards had not
+held him back, he would have seized M. Ginory's
+fat neck with both hands. The guards held Pradès
+back, while the Examining Magistrate, carelessly
+pricking the table with his pen, gently said, with a
+smile:</p>
+
+<p>"All the same, more than one malefactor has betrayed
+himself in a fit of anger. I have often
+thought that it would take very little to get myself
+assassinated, when I had before me an accused
+person whom I felt was guilty and who would not
+confess. Take away the man!"</p>
+
+<p>While they were pushing Pradès toward the corridor
+he shouted: "<i>Canailles</i>." M. Ginory ordered
+that Dantin should be left alone with him.
+"Alone," he said to Bernardet, whose look was a
+little uneasy. The registrar half rose from his
+chair, picking up his papers and pushing them into
+the pockets of his much worn paper case.</p>
+
+<p>"No; you may remain, Favarel."</p>
+
+<p>"Well," said the Magistrate in a familiar tone,
+when he found himself face to face with Jacques
+Dantin. "Have you reflected?"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;204]</span>
+Jacques Dantin, his lips pressed closely together,
+did not reply.</p>
+
+<p>"It is a counsellor&mdash;a counsellor of an especial
+kind&mdash;the cell. He who invented it"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Yes;" Dantin brusquely interrupted. "The
+brain suffers between those walls. I have not slept
+since I went there. Not slept at all. Insomnia is
+killing me. It seems as if I should go crazy!"</p>
+
+<p>"Then?" asked M. Ginory.</p>
+
+<p>"Then"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Jacques Dantin looked fiercely at the registrar,
+who sat waiting, his pen over his ear, his elbows
+on the table, his chin on his hands.</p>
+
+<p>"Then, oh, well! Then, here it is, I wish to tell
+you all&mdash;all. But to you&mdash;to you"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"To me alone?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," said Dantin, with the same fierce expression.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Favarel," the Magistrate began.</p>
+
+<p>The registrar had already risen. He slowly
+bowed and went out.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said the Magistrate to Jacques Dantin,
+"you can speak."</p>
+
+<p>The man still hesitated.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur," he asked, "will any word said here
+be repeated, ought it or must it be repeated in a
+courtroom, at the Assizes, I know not where&mdash;anywhere
+before the public?"</p>
+
+<p>"That depends," said M. Ginory. "But what
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;205]</span>
+you know you owe to justice, whether it be a revelation,
+an accusation or a confession, I ask it of
+you."</p>
+
+<p>Still Dantin hesitated. Then the Magistrate
+spoke these words: "I demand it!"</p>
+
+<p>With a violent effort the prisoner began. "So
+be it! But it is to a man of honor, rather than to
+a Magistrate, to whom I address these words. If
+I have hesitated to speak, if I have allowed myself
+to be suspected and to be accused, it is because it
+seemed to me impossible, absolutely impossible,
+that this same truth should not be revealed&mdash;I do
+not know in what way&mdash;that it would become
+known to you without compelling me to disclose a
+secret which was not mine."</p>
+
+<p>"To an Examining Magistrate one may tell
+everything," said M. Ginory. "We have listened
+to confessions in our offices which are as inviolable
+as those of the confessional made to a priest."</p>
+
+<p>And now, after having accused Dantin of lying,
+believing that he was acting a comedy, after smiling
+disdainfully at that common invention&mdash;a vow
+which one could not break&mdash;the perception of a
+possibility entered the Magistrate's mind that this
+man might be sincere. Hitherto he had closed his
+heart against sympathy for this man; they had
+met in the mutual hostility.</p>
+
+<p>The manner in which Jacques Dantin approached
+the question, the resolution with which he spoke,
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;206]</span>
+no longer resembled the obstinate attitude which
+he had before assumed in this same room.</p>
+
+<p>Reflection, the prison&mdash;the cell, without doubt&mdash;a
+frightful and stifling cell&mdash;had done its work.
+The man who had been excited to the point of not
+speaking now wished to tell all.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," he said, "since nothing has happened to
+convince you that I am not lying."</p>
+
+<p>"I am listening to you," said the Magistrate.</p>
+
+<p>Then, in a long, close conference, Jacques Dantin
+told M. Ginory his story. He related how, from
+early youth, he and Rovère had been close friends;
+of the warm affection which had always existed between
+them; of the shams and deceptions of which
+he had been guilty; of the bitterness of his ruined
+life; of an existence which ought to have been
+beautiful, and which, so useless, the life of a <i>viveur</i>,
+had almost made him&mdash;why?&mdash;how?&mdash;through need
+of money and a lack of moral sense&mdash;almost descend
+to crime.</p>
+
+<p>This Rovère, whom he was accused of killing,
+he loved, and, to tell the truth, in that strange and
+troublous existence which he had lived, Rovère
+had been the only true friend whom he had known.
+Rovère, a sort of pessimistic philosopher, a recluse,
+lycanthropic, after a life spent in feasting, having
+surfeited himself with pleasure, recognized also in
+his last years that disinterested affection is rare in
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;207]</span>
+this world, and his savage misanthropy softened
+before Jacques Dantin's warm friendship.</p>
+
+<p>"I continued to search for, in what is called
+pleasure and what as one's hair whitens becomes
+vice; in play; in the uproar of Paris, forgetfulness
+of life, of the dull life of a man growing old,
+alone, without home or family, an old, stupid fellow,
+whom the young people look at with hate and say
+to each other: 'Why is he still here?' Rovère,
+more and more, felt the need of withdrawing into
+solitude, thinking over his adventurous life, as bad
+and as ruined as mine, and he wished to see no one.
+A wolf, a wild boar in his lair! Can you understand
+this friendship between two old fellows, one
+of whom tried in every way to direct his thoughts
+from himself, and the other, waiting death in a
+corner of his fireside, solitary, unsociable?"</p>
+
+<p>"Perfectly! Go on!"</p>
+
+<p>And the magistrate, with eyes riveted upon
+Jacques Dantin, saw this man, excited, making
+light of this recital of the past; evoking remembrances
+of forgotten events, of this lost affection;
+lost, as all his life was.</p>
+
+<p>"This is not a conference; is it not so? You no
+longer believe that it is a comedy? I loved
+Rovère. Life had often separated us. He searched
+for fortune at the other end of the world. I made
+a mess of mine and ate it in Paris. But we always
+kept up our relations, and when he returned to
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;208]</span>
+France we were happy in again seeing each other.
+The grayer turned the hair, the more tender the
+heart became. I had always found him morose&mdash;from
+his twentieth year he always dragged after
+him a sinister companion&mdash;ennui. He had chosen
+a Consular career, to live far away, and in a fashion
+not at all like ours. I have often laughingly
+said to him that he probably had met with unrequited
+love; that he had experienced some unhappy
+passion. He said, no! I feigned to believe it.
+One is not sombre and melancholy like that without
+some secret grief. After all, there are others
+who do not feel any gayer with a smile on the lips.
+Sadness is no sign. Neither is gayety!"</p>
+
+<p>His face took on a weary, melancholy expression,
+which at first astonished the Magistrate; then he
+experienced a feeling of pity; he listened, silent
+and grave.</p>
+
+<p>"I will pass over all the details of our life, shall
+I not? My monologue would be too long. The
+years of youth passed with a rapidity truly
+astonishing; we come to the time when we found
+ourselves&mdash;he weary of life, established in his
+chosen apartments in the Boulevard de Clichy,
+with his paintings and books; sitting in front of
+his fire and awaiting death&mdash;I continuing to spur
+myself on like a foundered horse. Rovère moralized
+to me; I jeered at his sermons, and I went to
+sit by his fireside and talk over the past. One of
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;209]</span>
+his joys had been this portrait of me, painted by
+Paul Baudry. He had hung it up in his salon, at
+the corner of the chimney piece, at the left, and
+he often said to me:</p>
+
+<p>"'Dost thou know that when thou art not here
+I talk to it?'</p>
+
+<p>"I was not there very often. Parisian life
+draws us by its thousand attractions. The days
+which seem interminable when one is twenty rush
+by as if on wings when one is fifty. One has not
+even time to stop to see the friends one loves. At
+the last moment, if one is right, one ought to say,
+'How I have cast to the winds everything precious
+which life has given me. How foolish I have been&mdash;how
+stupid.' Pay no attention to my philosophisms&mdash;the
+cell! Mazas forces one to think!</p>
+
+<p>"One day&mdash;it was one morning&mdash;on returning
+from the club where I had passed the night stupidly
+losing sums which would have given joy to hundreds
+of families, I found on my desk a message
+from Rovère. If one would look through my
+papers one would find it there&mdash;I kept it. Rovère
+begged me to come to him immediately. I shivered&mdash;a
+sharp presentiment of death struck me. The
+writing was trembling, unlike his own. I struck
+my forehead in anger. This message had been
+waiting for me since the night before, while I was
+spending the hours in gambling. If, when I hurried
+toward the Boulevard de Clichy, I had
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;210]</span>
+found Rovère dead on my arrival, I could not, believe
+me, have experienced greater despair. His
+assassination seemed to me atrocious; but I was at
+least able to assure him that his friendship was returned.
+I hastily read the telegram, threw myself
+into a fiacre, and hastened to his apartments.
+The woman who acted as housekeeper for him,
+Mme. Moniche, the portress, raising her arms as
+she opened the door for me, said:</p>
+
+<p>"'Ah! Monsieur, but Monsieur has waited for
+you. He has repeated your name all night. He
+nearly died, but he is better now.'</p>
+
+<p>"Rovère, sitting the night before by his fire, had
+been stricken by lateral paralysis, and as soon as
+he could hold a pen, in spite of the orders of the
+physician who had been quickly called, had written
+and sent the message to me some hours before.</p>
+
+<p>"As soon as he saw me he&mdash;the strong man, the
+mad misanthrope, silent and sombre&mdash;held me in
+his arms and burst into tears. His embrace was
+that of a man who concentrates in one being all
+that remains of hope.</p>
+
+<p>"'Thou! thou art here!' he said in a low tone.
+'If thou knewest!'</p>
+
+<p>"I was moved to the depths of my heart. That
+manly face, usually so energetic, wore an expression
+of terror which was in some way almost childish, a
+timorous fright. The tears rose in his eyes.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;211]</span>
+"'Oh! how I have waited for thee! how I have
+longed for thee!'</p>
+
+<p>"He repeated this phrase with anxious obstinacy.
+Then he seemed to be suffocating. Emotion!
+The sight of me recalled to him the long agony of
+that night when he thought that he was about to
+die without parting with me for the last time.</p>
+
+<p>"'For what I have to tell thee'&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He shook his head.</p>
+
+<p>"'It is the secret of my life!'</p>
+
+<p>"He was lying on a sort of sick chair or lounge,
+in the library where he passed his last days with
+his books. He made me sit down beside him. He
+took my hand and said:</p>
+
+<p>"'I am going to die. I believed that the end
+had come last night. I called thee. Oh, well, if I
+had died there is one being in the world who would
+not have had the fortune which&mdash;I have'&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"He lowered his voice as if he thought we were
+spied upon, as if some one could hear.</p>
+
+<p>"'I have a daughter. Yes, even from thee I
+have hidden this secret, which tortures me. A
+daughter who loves me and who has not the right
+to confess this tenderness, no more than I have the
+right to give her my name. Ah! our youth, sad
+youth! I might have had a home to-day, a fireside
+of my own, a dear one near me, and instead of
+that, an affection of which I am ashamed and which
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;212]</span>
+I have hidden even from thee, Jacques, from thee,
+dost thou comprehend?'</p>
+
+<p>"I remember each of Rovère's words as if I was
+hearing them now. This conversation with my
+poor friend is among the most poignant yet most
+precious of my remembrances. With much emotion,
+which distressed me, the poor man revealed
+to me the secret which he had believed it his duty
+to hide from me so many years, and I vowed to
+him&mdash;I swore to him on my honor, and that is why
+I hesitated to speak, or rather refused to speak, not
+wishing to compromise any one, neither the dead
+nor living&mdash;I swore to him, Monsieur le Juge, to
+repeat nothing of what he told me to any one, to
+any one but to her"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Her?" interrogated M. Ginory.</p>
+
+<p>"His daughter," Dantin replied.</p>
+
+<p>The Examining Magistrate recalled that visitor
+in black, who had been seen occasionally at
+Rovère's apartments, and the little romance of
+which Paul Rodier had written in his paper&mdash;the
+romance of the Woman in Black!</p>
+
+<p>"And this daughter?"</p>
+
+<p>"She bears," said Dantin, with a discouraged
+gesture, "the name of the father which the law
+gives her, and this name is a great name, an illustrious
+name, that of a retired general officer, living
+in one of the provinces, a widower, and who adores
+the girl who is another man's child. The mother
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;213]</span>
+is dead. The father has never known. When
+dying, the mother revealed the secret to her daughter.
+She came, by command of the dead, to see
+Rovère, but as a Sister of Charity, faithful to the
+name which she bears. She does not wish to
+marry; she will never leave the crippled old soldier
+who calls her his daughter, and who adores her."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh!" said M. Ginory, remaining mute a moment
+before this very simple drama, and in which,
+in that moment of reflection, he comprehended, he
+analyzed, nearly all of the hidden griefs, the secret
+tears, the stifled sobs, the stolen kisses. "And
+that is why you kept silent?" he asked.</p>
+
+<p>"Yes, Monsieur. Oh! but I could not endure
+the torture any longer, and not seeing the expected
+release any nearer, I would have spoken, I would
+have spoken to escape that cell, that sense of suffocation,
+I endured there. It seemed to me, however,
+that I owed it to my dead friend not to reveal
+his secret to any one, not even to you. I shall
+never forget Rovère's joy, when relieved of the
+burden, by the confidence which he had reposed in
+me, he said to me, that now that she who was his
+daughter, and was poor, living at Blois only on the
+pension of a retired officer to whom she had appointed
+herself nurse, knowing that she was not his
+daughter, this innocent child, who was paying with
+a life of devotion for the sins of two guilty ones,
+would at least have happiness at last.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;214]</span>
+"She is young, and the one for whom she cares
+cannot live always. My fortune will give her a
+dowry. And then!"</p>
+
+<p>"It was to me to whom he confided this fortune.
+He had very little money with his notary. Erratic
+and distrustful, Rovère kept his valuables in his
+safe, as he kept his books in his library. It seemed
+that he was a collector, picking up all kinds of
+things. Avaricious? No; but he wished to have
+about him, under his hand, everything which belonged
+to him. He possibly may have wished to
+give what he had directly to the one to whom it
+seemed good to him to give it, and confide it to me
+in trust.</p>
+
+<p>"I regret not having asked him directly that day
+what he counted on doing with his fortune and how
+he intended enriching his child, whom he had not
+the right to recognize. I dared, or, rather, I did
+not think of it. I experienced a strong emotion
+when I saw my friend enfeebled and almost dying.
+I had known him so different, so handsome. Oh!
+those poor, sad, restless eyes, that lowered voice, as
+if he feared an enemy was listening! Illness had
+quickly, brutally changed that vigorous man, suddenly
+old and timorous.</p>
+
+<p>"I went away from that first interview much
+distressed, carrying a secret which seemed to me a
+heavy and cruel one; and which made me think of
+the uselessness, the wickedness, the vain loves of a
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;215]</span>
+ruined life. But I felt that Rovère owed truly his
+fortune to that girl who, the next day after the
+death of the one whom she had piously attended,
+found herself poor and isolated in a little house in
+a steep street, near the Château, above Blois. I
+felt that, whatever this unknown father left, ought
+not to go to distant relatives, who cared nothing
+for him; did not even know him; were ignorant of
+his sufferings and perhaps even of his existence,
+and who by law would inherit.</p>
+
+<p>"A dying man, yes! There could be no question
+about it, and Dr. Vilandry, whom I begged to accompany
+me to see my friend, did not hide it from
+me. Rovère was dying of a kidney difficulty,
+which had made rapid progress.</p>
+
+<p>"It was necessary, then, since he was not alone
+in the world, that he should think of the one of
+whom he had spoken and whom he loved.</p>
+
+<p>"'For I love her, that child whom I have no
+right to name. I love her! She is good, tender,
+admirable. If I did not see that she resembled me&mdash;for
+she does resemble me&mdash;I should tell thee that
+she was beautiful. I would be proud to cry aloud:
+"This is my daughter!" To promenade with her
+on my arm&mdash;and I must hide this secret from all
+the world. That is my torture! And it is the
+chastisement of all that has not been right in my
+life. Ah! sad, unhappy loves!' That same
+malediction for the past came to his lips as it had
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;216]</span>
+come to his thoughts. The old workman, burdened
+with labor throughout the week, who could
+promenade on the Boulevard de Clichy on Sunday,
+with his daughter on his arm, was happier than
+Rovère. And&mdash;a strange thing, sentiment of
+shame and remorse&mdash;feeling himself traveling fast
+to his last resting-place in the cemetery, he expressed
+no wish to see that child, to send for her to
+come from Blois under some pretext or other, easy
+enough to find.</p>
+
+<p>"No, he experienced a fierce desire for solitude,
+he shrunk from an interview, in which he feared all
+his grief would rush to his lips in a torrent of
+words. He feared for himself, for his weakness, for
+the strange feeling he experienced in his head.</p>
+
+<p>"'It seems as if it oscillated upon my shoulders,'
+he said. 'If Marthe came (and he repeated the
+name as a child would have pronounced it who was
+just learning to name the letters of a word) I
+would give her but the sad spectacle of a broken-down
+man, and leave on her mind only the impression
+of a human ruin. And then&mdash;and then&mdash;not
+to see her! not to have the right to see her! that
+is all right&mdash;it is my chastisement!'</p>
+
+<p>"Let it be so! I understood. I feared that an
+interview would be mortal. He had been so terribly
+agitated when he had sent for me that other
+time.</p>
+
+<p>"But I, at least, wished to recall to him his
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;217]</span>
+former wish which he had expressed of providing
+for the girl's future. I desired that he should make
+up for the past, since money is one of the forms of
+reparation. But I dared not speak to him again in
+regard to it, or of that trust of which he had
+spoken.</p>
+
+<p>"He said to me, this strong man whom Death
+had never frightened, and whom he had braved
+many times, he said to me now, weakened by this
+illness which was killing him hour by hour:</p>
+
+<p>"If I knew that my end was near I would decide&mdash;but
+I have time."</p>
+
+<p>"Time! Each day brought him a little nearer
+to that life about which I feared to say to him:
+'The time has come!' The fear, in urging him to
+a last resolution, of seeming like an executioner
+whose presence seemed to say: 'To-day is the
+day!' prevented me. You understand, Monsieur?
+And why not? I ought to wait no longer.
+Rovère's confidence had made of me a second Rovère
+who possessed the strength and force of will
+which the first one now lacked. I felt that I held
+in my hands, so to speak, Marthe's fate. I did not
+know her, but I looked upon her as a martyr in
+her vocation of nurse to the old paralytic to whom
+she was paying, in love, the debt of the dead wife.
+I said to myself: 'It is to me, to me alone, that
+Rovère must give instructions of what he wishes
+to leave to his daughter, and it is for me to urge
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;218]</span>
+him to do this, it is for me to brace his weakened
+will! I was resolved! It was a duty! Each day
+the unhappy man's strength failed. I saw it&mdash;this
+human ruin! One morning, when I went to his
+apartments, I found him in a singular state of terror.
+He related me a story, I knew not what, of a
+thief, whose victim he was; the lock of his door
+had been forced, his safe opened. Then, suddenly,
+interrupting himself, he began to laugh, a feeble
+laugh, which made me ill.</p>
+
+<p>"'I am a fool,' he said. 'I am dreaming,
+awake&mdash;I continue in the daytime the nightmares
+of the night&mdash;a thief here! No one has come&mdash;Mme.
+Moniche has watched&mdash;but my head is so
+weak, so weak! I have known so many rascals in
+my life! Rascals always return, <i>hein!</i>'</p>
+
+<p>"He made a sad attempt at a laugh.</p>
+
+<p>"It was delirium! A delirium which soon
+passed away, but which frightened me. It returned
+with increased force each day, and at shorter
+intervals.</p>
+
+<p>"Well, I said to myself, during a lucid interview,
+'he must do what he has resolved to do,
+what he had willed to do&mdash;what he wishes to do!'
+And I decided&mdash;it was the night before the assassination&mdash;to
+bring him to the point, to aid his hesitation.
+I found him calmer that day. He was
+lying on his lounge, enveloped in his dressing
+gown, with a traveling rug thrown across his thin
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;219]</span>
+legs. With his black skull-cap and his grayish
+beard he looked like a dying Doge.</p>
+
+<p>"He held out his bony hand to me, giving me a
+sad smile, and said that he felt better. A period
+of remission in his disease, a feeling of comfort pervading
+his general condition.</p>
+
+<p>"'What if I should recover?' he said, looking
+me full in the face.</p>
+
+<p>"I comprehended by that ardent look, which was
+of singular vitality, that this man, who had never
+feared death, still clung to life. It was instinct.</p>
+
+<p>"I replied that certainly he might, and I even
+said that he would surely recover, but&mdash;with what
+grievous repugnance did I approach the subject&mdash;I
+asked him if, experiencing the general feeling of
+ease and comfort which pervaded his being, whether
+he would not be even more comfortable and happy
+if he thought of what he ought to do for that child
+of whom he had spoken, and for whose future he
+wished to provide.</p>
+
+<p>"'And since thou art feeling better, my dear
+Rovère, it is perhaps the opportunity to put
+everything in order in that life which thou
+art about to recover, and which will be a new life.'</p>
+
+<p>"He looked fixedly at me with his beautiful
+eyes. It was a profound regard, and I saw that he
+divined my thought.</p>
+
+<p>"'Thou art right!' he said firmly; 'no weakness.'</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;220]</span>
+"Then, gathering all his forces, he arose, stood
+upright, refusing even the arm which I held out to
+him, and in his dressing gown, which hung about
+him, he seemed to me taller, thinner, even handsomer.
+He took two or three steps, at first a little
+unsteady, then, straightening up, he walked directly
+to his safe, turned the letters, and opened it, after
+having smiled, and said:</p>
+
+<p>"'I had forgotten the word&mdash;four letters; it is,
+however, a little thing. My head is empty.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then, the safe opened, he took out papers&mdash;of
+value, without doubt&mdash;papers which he took back
+to his lounge, spread out on a table near at hand,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"'Let us see! This which I am going to give
+thee is for her&mdash;&mdash;A will, yes, I could make a will&mdash;&mdash;but
+it would create talk&mdash;&mdash;it would be asked
+what I had done&mdash;&mdash;it would be searched out, dug
+out of the past, it would open a tomb&mdash;&mdash;I cannot!&mdash;--What
+I have shall be hers, thou wilt give
+it to her&mdash;thou'&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"And his large, haggard eyes searched through
+the papers.</p>
+
+<p>"'Ah! here!' he said; 'here are some bonds!
+Egyptian&mdash;of a certain value to the holder, at 3 per
+cent. I hid that&mdash;where did I put it?'</p>
+
+<p>"He picked up the papers, turned them over and
+over, became alarmed, turned pale.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;221]</span>
+"'But,' I said to him, 'is it not among those
+papers?'</p>
+
+<p>"He shrugged his shoulders, displayed with an
+ironical smile the engraved papers.</p>
+
+<p>"'Some certificates of decorations! The bric-a-brac
+of a Consular life.'</p>
+
+<p>"Then with renewed energy he again went to the
+safe, opened the till, pulled it out, and searched
+again and again.</p>
+
+<p>"Overcome with fright, he exclaimed: 'It is
+not there!'</p>
+
+<p>"'Why is it not there?'</p>
+
+<p>"And he gave me another look&mdash;haggard! terrible!
+His face was fearfully contracted. He
+clasped his head with both hands, and stammered,
+as if coming out of a dream.</p>
+
+<p>"'It is true, I remember&mdash;I have hidden it!
+Yes, I hid it! I do not know where&mdash;in some
+book! In which one?'</p>
+
+<p>"He looked around him with wild eyes. The
+cerebral anæmia which had made him fear robbery
+again seized him, and poor Rovère, my old friend,
+plainly showed that he was enduring the agony
+of a man who is drowning, and who does not know
+where to cling in order to save himself.</p>
+
+<p>"He was still standing, but as he turned around,
+he staggered.</p>
+
+<p>"He repeated in a hoarse, frightened voice:
+'Where, where have I hidden that? Fool! The
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;222]</span>
+safe did not seem to me secure enough! Where,
+where have I put it?'</p>
+
+<p>"It was then, Monsieur, yes, at that moment,
+that the concierge entered and saw us standing face
+to face before those papers of which she had spoken.
+I must have looked greatly embarrassed, very pale,
+showing the violent emotion which seized me by
+the throat. Rovère said to her rather roughly:
+'What are you here for?' and sent her away with
+a gesture. Mme. Moniche had had time to see the
+open safe and the papers spread out, which she
+supposed were valuable. I understand how she
+deceived herself, and when I think of it, I accuse
+myself. There was something tragic taking place
+between Rovère and me. This woman could not
+know what it was, but she felt it.</p>
+
+<p>"And it was more terrible, a hundred times more
+terrible, when she had disappeared. There seemed
+to be a battle raging in Rovère's brain, as between
+his will and his weakness. Standing upright, striving
+not to give way, struggling to concentrate all
+his brain power in his effort to remember, to find
+some trace of the hidden place where he had foolishly
+put his fortune, between the leaves of some
+huge book. Rovère called violently, ardently to
+his aid his last remnant of strength to combat
+against this anæmia which took away the memory
+of what he had done. He rolled his eyes desperately,
+found nothing, remembered nothing.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;223]</span>
+"It was awful&mdash;this combat against memory,
+which disappeared, fled; this aspect of a panting
+beast, a hunted boar which seemed to seize this
+man&mdash;and I shivered when, with a rage, I shall
+never forget, the dying man rushed, in two steps,
+to the table, bent over the papers, snatched them
+up with his thin hands, crumpled them up, tore
+them in two and threw them under his feet, with
+an almost maniacal laugh, saying in strident tones:</p>
+
+<p>"'Ah! Decorations! Brevets, baubles! Childish
+foolishness! What good are they? Would
+they give her a living?'</p>
+
+<p>"And he kept on laughing. He excited himself
+over the papers, which he stamped under his feet
+until he had completely exhausted himself. He
+gasped, 'I stifle!' and he half fell over the lounge,
+upon which I laid him. I fully believed that he
+was dying. I experienced a horrible sensation,
+which was agonizing. He revived, however. But
+how, after that swoon and that crisis, could I speak
+to him again of his daughter, of that which he
+wished to leave her, to give, in trust, to me? He
+became preoccupied with childish things, returning
+to the dreams of a rich man; he spoke of going out
+the next day. We would go together in the Bois.
+We would dine at the Pavilion. He would like to
+travel. And thus he rambled on.</p>
+
+<p>"I said to myself, 'Wait! Let us wait! To-morrow,
+after a good night's sleep, he will perhaps
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;224]</span>
+remember. I surely have some days before me.
+To speak to him to-day would be to provoke a new
+crisis.'</p>
+
+<p>"And I helped him to put back in the safe the
+crushed, torn papers, without his asking me, or
+even himself questioning how they had come there,
+who had thrown them on the floor, or who had
+opened the safe. His face wore a slight smile, his
+gestures were automatic. Very weary, he at last
+said:</p>
+
+<p>"'I am very tired. I would like to sleep.' I
+left him. He had stretched himself out and covered
+himself up. He closed his eyes and said:</p>
+
+<p>"'It is so good to sleep!'</p>
+
+<p>"I would see him to-morrow. I would try to
+again to-morrow awaken in him the desire which
+now seemed dulled. To-morrow his memory would
+have returned, and in some of his books where he
+had (like the Arabs who put their harvests in silos)
+placed his treasure he would find the fortune intended
+for his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow! It is the word one repeats most
+often, and which one has the least right to use.</p>
+
+<p>"I saw Rovère only after he was dead, with his
+throat cut&mdash;assassinated by whom? The man whom
+you have arrested has traveled much; he comes from
+a distance. Rovère was Consul at Buenos Ayres,
+and you know that he said to me the last day I saw
+him: 'I have known many rascals in my life!'
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;225]</span>
+Which seemed very simple when one thinks of the
+way he had lived.</p>
+
+<p>"This is the truth, Monsieur. I ought to have
+told you sooner. I repeat that I had the weakness
+of wishing to keep the vow given to my dead friend.
+I had the name of a woman to betray, the name of
+a man, too; innocent of Rovère's fault. And then,
+again, it seemed to me that this truth ought to become
+known of itself. When I was arrested, a
+sort of foolish bravado urged me to see how far the
+absurdity of the charge could accumulate against
+me seeming proofs. I am a gambler. That was a
+part I played against you, or rather against the
+foolishness of destiny. I did not take a second
+thought that the error could be a lasting one. I
+had, moreover, only a word to say, but this word,
+I repeat, I hesitated to speak, and I willingly supported
+the consequence of this hesitation, even because
+this word was a name."</p>
+
+<p>"That name," said M. Ginory, "I have not asked
+you."</p>
+
+<p>"I refused it to the Magistrate," said Jacques
+Dantin, "but I confide it to the man of honor!"</p>
+
+<p>"There is only a Magistrate here," M. Ginory
+replied, "but the legal inquiry has its secrets, as
+life has."</p>
+
+<p>And Jacques Dantin gave the name which the
+one whom Louis-Pièrre Rovère called, Marthe, bore
+as her rightful name.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;226]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XVI.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">M. Ginory</span>, M. Leriche, the chief; Bernardet,
+and, in fact, all the judiciary, believed that Charles
+Pradès was guilty of the murder of Rovère. Bernardet,
+who had been an actor in this drama, had
+now become a spectator.</p>
+
+<p>Paul Rodier, a good reporter, had learned before
+his confreres of the arrest of the young man, and,
+abandoning what he had called his trail of the
+Woman in Black, he abruptly whirled about and
+quickly invented a sensational biography of the
+newcomer. Charles-Henri Pradès, or rather Carlos
+Pradès, as he called himself, had been a <i>gaucho</i>, a
+buffalo tamer, a cowboy, using, turn by turn, the
+American revolver against the Redskins and the
+Mexican lasso against the Yankees.</p>
+
+<p>The journalist had obtained a signature, picked
+up by the lodging-house keeper where the guilty
+man had been hunted down, and published in his
+paper the autographic characters; he had deduced
+from them some dramatic observations. Cooper,
+of former times; Gustave Aymard, of yesterday;
+Rudyard Kipling or Bret Harte, of to-day, had
+never met a personage more dreadful, and at the
+same time more heroic. Carlos Pradès used the
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;227]</span>
+navaja (Spanish knife) with the terrible rapidity of
+a Catalan. He had felt since the days of Buenos
+Ayres a fierce hate for the ex-Consul, and this
+crime, which some of his brother reporters, habitually
+indifferently informed (it was Paul Rodier who
+spoke), now attributed alone to the avarice of this
+Cambrioleur from over the sea; he, Rodier, gave
+this note as the cause of vengeance, and built
+thereupon a romance which made his readers
+shiver. Or, rather, he said nothing outright. He
+permitted one a glimpse into, he outlined, one
+knows not what, dark history. Soon he made this
+Carlos Pradès the instrument and the arm of an association
+of vengeance. He could even believe that
+there was anarchy in the affair. Then he had the
+young man mixed in some love affair, a drama of
+passion, with Argentine Republic for the theatre.</p>
+
+<p>As a result he had succeeded in making interesting
+the man whom Bernardet had pushed a few
+nights before into the station house.</p>
+
+<p>And, what was a singular thing, the reporter had
+divined part of the truth. It was still another
+episode in his past that Rovère expiated when he
+found himself one day, in his salon in the Boulevard
+de Clichy, face to face with the man who was
+to be his murderer. At Buenos Ayres, the ex-Consul
+had been associated in a large agricultural
+enterprise with a man whose hazardous speculations,
+play and various adventures had completely
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;228]</span>
+ruined him, and who had left two children&mdash;a
+young girl whom Rovère thought for a moment
+of marrying, and a son, younger&mdash;poor beings of
+whom the Consul, paying his partner's debts,
+seemed the natural protector. Jean Pradès, in
+committing suicide&mdash;he had killed himself, frightened
+at the magnitude of his debts&mdash;had commended
+his children to Rovère's care.</p>
+
+<p>If Carlotta had lived, without doubt Rovère
+would have made her his wife. He loved her with
+a deep and respectful tenderness. The poor girl
+died very suddenly, and there remained to Rovère
+only his dream. One of those remembrances of a
+fireside, one of those spectres which brush the
+forehead with their wings or the folds of their
+winding sheets, when in the solitude in which he
+has voluntarily buried himself the searcher after
+adventures recalls the past. The past of yesterday.
+Illusions, disillusions, old loves, miseries!</p>
+
+<p>Rovère gave to this brother of the dead girl the
+affection which he had felt for her. He remembered,
+also, the father's request. Pradès's son, passionate,
+eager to live, tempted in all his appetites,
+accepted as his due Rovère's truly paternal devotion,
+worked on the sympathy of this man, who,
+through pity and duty, too, gave to Charles a little
+of the affection which he had felt for the sister,
+almost his fiancee, and for the father, dead by his
+own hand.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;229]</span>
+But, little by little, the solicitations, the unreasonable
+demands of Pradès, who, believing that
+he had a just claim on his father's old partner,
+found it very natural that Rovère should devote
+himself to him&mdash;these continual and pressing demands
+became for the Consul irritating obsessions.
+Rovère seemed to this young man, who was a
+spendthrift and a gambler&mdash;a gambler possessed
+with atavistic frenzy&mdash;a sort of living savings
+bank, from which he could draw without counting.
+His importunities at last seemed fatiguing and excessive,
+and Pradès was advised one beautiful day
+that he no longer need count from that moment on
+the generosity of his benefactor. All this happened
+at Buenos Ayres, and about the time of the Consul's
+departure for France. Rovère added to this
+very curt declaration a last benefit. He gave to
+the brother of the dead girl, to the son of Pradès,
+of the firm of Rovère and Pradès, a sum sufficient
+to enable him to live while waiting for better
+things, and he told the young man in proper terms
+that, as he had now no one to depend upon, that he
+had better take himself elsewhere to be hung.
+The word could not be, with the appetites and
+habits of Charles Pradès, taken in a figurative
+sense, and the young man continued his life of adventures,
+as tragic in their reality and as improbable
+as the reporters' melodramatic inventions.</p>
+
+<p>Then, at the end of his resources, after having
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;230]</span>
+searched for fortune among miners, weary of tramping
+about in America, he embarked one morning
+for Havre, with the idea that the best gold mine
+was still that living placer which he had exploited
+in Buenos Ayres, and which was called Pièrre
+Rovère.</p>
+
+<p>At Paris, where he knew the Consul had retired,
+Pradès soon found trace of him, and learned where
+was the retreat of his brother-in-law. His brother-in-law!
+He pronounced the word with a wicked
+sneer, as if it had for him a something understood
+about the sweet and maiden remembrance of the
+dead girl. There, in gay Paris, with some resources
+which allowed him to pay for his board and
+lodging in a third-rate hotel, he searched, asked,
+discovered, at last, the address of the ex-Consul,
+and presented himself to Rovère, who felt, at sight
+of this spectre, his anger return.</p>
+
+<p>The first time that Charles Pradès had asked at
+the lodge if M. Rovère was at home, the Moniches
+had permitted him to go upstairs, and perhaps
+Mme. Moniche would have suspected the man in
+the sombrero if she had not surprised Jacques Dantin
+before the open safe and the papers.</p>
+
+<p>Pradès, moreover, had appeared only three times
+at Rovère's house, and on the day of the murder
+he had entered at the moment when Mme. Moniche
+was sweeping the upper floors, and Moniche was
+working in his shop in the rear of the lodge, and
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;231]</span>
+the staircase was empty. He rang, and Rovère,
+with dragging steps, came to open the door.
+Rovère was ill and was a little ennuied, and he believed,
+or instinctively hoped, that it was the woman
+in black&mdash;his daughter!</p>
+
+<p>Everything served Pradès's projects. He had
+come not to kill, but by some means to gain entrance
+to Rovère's apartments, and, when once
+there, to find some resource&mdash;a loan, more or less
+freely given, more or less forced&mdash;and he would
+leave with it.</p>
+
+<p>Rovère, already worn out, weary of his former
+supplications, felt tempted to shut the door in his
+face, but Pradès pushed it back, entered, closed it,
+and said:</p>
+
+<p>"A last interview! You will never see me
+again! But listen to me!"</p>
+
+<p>Then, Rovère allowed him to enter the salon, and
+despite the terrible weakness which he experienced
+wished to make this a final, decisive interview; to
+disembarrass himself once for all of this everlasting
+beggar, sometimes whining, sometimes threatening.</p>
+
+<p>"Will you not let me die in peace?" he said.
+"Have I not paid my debt?"</p>
+
+<p>But Pradès had seated himself in a fauteuil,
+crossed his legs and hung over his knee his sombrero,
+on which he drummed a minstrel march.</p>
+
+<p>"My dear Monsieur Rovère, it is a last appeal
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;232]</span>
+for funds. I believe that America is better than
+Paris. And in order to return there or to do what
+I ought here, I must have what I have not&mdash;money!"</p>
+
+<p>"I am tired of giving you money!" Rovère
+quickly replied.</p>
+
+<p>And between these two men, bound by the remembrance
+of the dead girl&mdash;a bond burdensome
+to the one, imposed upon by the other&mdash;a storm of
+bitter words and harsh sentiments arose and kindled
+fierce anger in both.</p>
+
+<p>"I tried to let you remain in peace, my dear
+Consul. But hunger has driven the wolf out of
+the woods. I am very hungry. And here I am!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have nothing with which to feed your appetites.
+You are nothing but a burden to me."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! Ingratitude!" and Pradès, with his Argentine
+accent, spoke his sister's name.</p>
+
+<p>"My father died and Carlotta herself entrusted
+me to your care, my dear brother-in-law!"</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to the sick man, irritated as he was,
+that this name&mdash;which he had buried deep in his
+heart with chaste tenderness&mdash;was a supreme insult.</p>
+
+<p>"I forbid you to evoke that memory! You do
+not see, then, that the memory of that dear and
+saintly creature is one of the griefs of my life!"</p>
+
+<p>"And it is one of my heritages! Brother-in-law
+of a consul, <i>Senor mia</i>, but it is a title, and I hold
+it!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;233]</span>
+Rovère experienced a strong desire to call, to
+ring, to give an order to have this troublesome
+visitor put out. But energetic and fearless as he
+had been but a short time before, now weakened
+by illness, he trembled before a possible scandal.
+Then he, unaided, attempted to push the young
+man out of the salon. Pradès resisted, and, at the
+first touch, gave a bound, and all that was evil in
+him suddenly awoke.</p>
+
+<p>A struggle ensued, without a word being pronounced
+by either; a quick, brutal struggle.
+Rovère counted on his past strength, taking by
+the collar this Pradès who threatened him, and
+Pradès, while clutching the ex-Consul with his left
+hand, searched in his pocket for a weapon&mdash;the one
+which Bernardet had taken from him.</p>
+
+<p>This was a sinister moment! Pradès pushed
+Rovère back; he staggered and fell against a piece
+of furniture, while the young man disengaging himself,
+stepped back, quickly opened his Spanish
+knife, then, with a bound, caught Rovère, shook
+him, and holding the knife uplifted, said:</p>
+
+<p>"Thou hast willed it!"</p>
+
+<p>It was at this instant that Rovère, whose hands
+were contracted, dug his nails into the assassin's
+neck&mdash;the nails which the Commissary Desbrière
+and M. Jacquelin Audrays had found still red with
+blood.</p>
+
+<p>Pradès, who had come there either to supplicate
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;234]</span>
+or threaten, now had only one thought, hideous and
+ferocious&mdash;to kill! He did not reason. It was no
+more than an unchained instinct. The noise of the
+organs upon the Boulevard, which accompanied
+with their musical, dragging notes this savage
+scene, like a tremulo undertone to a melodrama at
+the theatre, he did not hear. The whole intensity
+of his life seemed to be concentrated in his fury, in
+his hand armed with the knife. He threw himself
+on Rovère; he struck the flesh, opening the throat,
+as across the water among the Gauchos he had been
+accustomed to kill sheep or cut the throat of an ox.</p>
+
+<p>Rovère staggered, wavered, freed from the hand
+which held him, and Pradès stepping back, looked
+at him.</p>
+
+<p>Livid, the dying man seemed to live only in his
+eyes. He had cast upon the murderer a last meaning
+look&mdash;now, in a sort of supreme agony, he
+looked around, his eyes searched for a support, for
+aid, yes, they called, while from that throat horrible
+sounds issued.</p>
+
+<p>Pradès saw with a kind of fright, Rovère, with
+a superhuman tragic effort, step back, staggering
+like a drunken man, pull with his poor contracted
+hands from above the chimney piece an object
+which the murderer had not noticed and upon
+which, with an ardent, prayerful expression he
+fixed his eyes, stammering some quick inarticulate
+words which Pradès could not hear or understand.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;235]</span>
+It seemed to Pradès that between his victim and
+himself there was a witness, and whether he thought
+of the value of the stones imbedded in the frame or
+whether he wished to take from Rovère this last
+support in his distress, he went to him and attempted
+to tear the portrait from his hands. But
+an extraordinary strength seemed to come to the
+dying man and Rovère resisted, fastening his eyes
+upon the portrait, casting upon it a living flame,
+like the last flare of a dying lamp, and with this
+last, despairing, agonizing look the ex-Consul
+breathed his last. He fell. Pradès tore the portrait
+from the fingers which clutched it. That
+frame, he could sell it. He picked up here and
+there some pieces which seemed to him of value, as
+if on a pillaging tour on the prairies. He was
+about to enter the library where the safe was, when
+the noise of the opening of the entrance door awakened
+his trapper's instinct. Some one was coming.
+Who it could be was of little importance. To remain
+was to expose himself, to be at once arrested.
+The corpse once seen, the person would cry aloud,
+rush out, close the door and send for the police.</p>
+
+<p>Hesitating between a desire to pillage and the
+necessity for fright, Pradès did not wait long to
+decide. Should he hide? Impossible! Then,
+stepping back to the salon door, he flattened himself
+as much as possible against the wall and
+waited until the door should be opened when he
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;236]</span>
+would be completely hidden behind it. As Mme.
+Moniche stepped into the room and cried out as she
+saw Rovère lying on the floor, Pradès slipped into
+the ante-chamber, found himself on the landing,
+closed the door, rapidly descended the stairs and
+stepped out upon the Boulevard de Clichy among
+the passers-by, even before Mme. Moniche, terrified,
+had called for help.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;237]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XVII.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">All</span> the details of that murder, M. Ginory had
+drawn, one by one, from Pradès in his examination.
+The murderer denied at first; hesitated; discussed;
+then at last, like a cask with the bung out, from
+which pours not wine, but blood, the prisoner told
+all; confessed; recounted; loosened his tongue;
+abandoned himself weakened and conquered, weary
+of his misery.</p>
+
+<p>"I was so foolish, so stupid," he violently said,
+"as to keep the portrait. I believed that the frame
+was worth a fortune. Fool! I sold it for a hundred
+sous!"</p>
+
+<p>He gave the merchant's address, it was on the
+Quai Saint Michel. Bernardet found the frame as
+he had found the painted panel, and this time, no
+great credit was due him.</p>
+
+<p>"Now," said he, "the affair is ended, <i>classé</i>.
+My children (he was relating his adventures to his
+little girls), we must pass to another. And why"&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Why, what?" asked Mme. Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>"Eh! there it is! Why&mdash;it lacks the elucidation
+of a problem. I will see! I will know!"</p>
+
+<p>He still remembered the young Danish doctor,
+whom he had seen with M. Morin at the autopsy.
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;238]</span>
+With his knowledge of men, with the sharp, keen
+eye of the police officer, Bernardet had recognized
+a man of superior mind; a mind dreamy and mysterious.
+He knew where Dr. Erwin lived during
+his sojourn in Paris, and he went to his apartment
+one beautiful morning and rang the bell at the door
+of a hotel in the Boulevard Saint Martin, where
+students and strangers lodge. He might have
+asked advice of M. Morin, of the master of
+French Science, but he, the Inspector of Sureté,
+approach these high personages, to question them.
+He dared not as long as there was a Danish doctor.</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet's brain whirled. He felt almost certain
+that Dr. Erwin would give the same explanation
+which he, himself, suspected, in regard to the
+observed phenomenon.</p>
+
+<p>"The dead man's eye has spoken and can speak,"
+said Bernardet to himself. "Yes, surely. I am
+not deceived."</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Erwin met Bernardet cordially and listened
+to him with profound attention. The police officer
+repeated word for word the confession drawn from
+Pradès. Then he asked the Danish physician if he
+really believed that Jacques Dantin's image had
+been transfixed on the retina of the dying man's
+eye, during the time when he had held and gazed
+at the portrait.</p>
+
+<p>"For the proofs which I obtained were very confused,"
+said the officer, "it is possible, and I say it
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;239]</span>
+is quite easy to recognize Jacques Dantin's features.
+We have seen it, and, according to your opinion
+even the painting was able to be&mdash;how shall I
+express myself&mdash;stored up, retained in the retina."</p>
+
+<p>"You found the proof there," said Dr. Erwin.</p>
+
+<p>"So, according to your opinion, I have not deceived
+myself?"</p>
+
+<p>"No!"</p>
+
+<p>"I have truly found in the retina of the dead
+man's eye the last vision he saw when living?"</p>
+
+<p>"Yes!"</p>
+
+<p>"But the vision of a painting. A painting,
+Doctor."</p>
+
+<p>"Why not!" Dr. Erwin responded in a sharp
+tone. "Do you know what happened? Knowing
+that he was dying the unhappy man went, urged
+by a tragic impulse, to that portrait which represented
+to him all that was left, concentrating in one
+image alone, all his life."</p>
+
+<p>"Then it is possible? It is possible?" Bernardet
+repeated.</p>
+
+<p>"I believe it," said the Dane. "The man is
+dying. He has only one thought&mdash;to go directly
+to the one who, surviving him, guarded his secrets
+and his life. He seized his portrait; he tore it
+from its hook with all his strength; he devoured it
+with his eyes; he drank it in with a look, if I may
+be allowed the expression. To this picture of the
+being whom he loved he spoke; he cried to him;
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;240]</span>
+telling him his last wishes; dictating to him his
+thoughts of vengeance. At this supreme moment
+his energy was increased a hundredfold, I know
+not what intensity of life was concentrated on this
+image, and gathering all his failing forces in a last
+look the man who wished to live; the man weakened
+by illness, dying, assassinated, put into that
+last regard the electric force, the fire which fixed
+the image (confused, no doubt, but recognizable
+since you have traced the resemblance) upon the
+retina. A phantom, if you wish, which is reflected
+in the dead man's eye."</p>
+
+<p>"And," repeated Bernardet, who wished to be
+perfectly assured in regard to the question, "it is
+not only the image of a living being, it is, to use
+your words, the phantom even of a painting which
+was retained on the retina?"</p>
+
+<p>"I do not reply to you: 'That is possible!'
+It is you who say to me: 'I have seen it!' And
+you have seen it, in truth, and the form, vague
+though it may be, the painted figure permits you to
+find in a passer-by the man whose picture the retina
+had already shown you!"</p>
+
+<p>"Oh! well! Doctor," said the little Bernardet,
+"I shall tell that, but they will deny it. They will
+say that it is impossible!"</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Erwin smiled. He seemed to be looking,
+with his deep blue eyes, at some invisible perspective,
+not bounded by the rooms of little room.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;241]</span>
+"One has said," he began, "that the word <i>impossible</i>
+is not French. It would be more exact to
+affirm that it was not <i>human</i>! We attain a knowledge
+of the unknowable. The mysterious is approachable.
+One must deny nothing <i>a priori</i>; one
+must believe all things possible and not only a
+dream. Search for the truth, the <i>harsh</i> truth, as
+your Stendhal said. Well! the word is wrong.
+One ought to say justly, the <i>exquisite</i> truth, for it
+is a joy for those who search, that daily life where
+each movement marks a step advanced, where the
+heart beats at the thought of a rendezvous in the
+laboratory as at a rendezvous of love. Ah! he is
+happy who has given his life to science. He lives
+in a dream. It is the poetry, in our times of prose.
+The dream," continued the young doctor as in an
+ecstasy, while Bernardet listened, ravished, "the
+dream is everywhere. It is impossible to make it
+tangible. Thought, human thought, can sometime
+be deciphered like an open book. An American
+physician asked to be permitted to try an experiment
+upon the cranium of a condemned man, still
+living. Through the cranium he studied the man's
+brain. Has not Edison undertaken to give sight
+to the blind! But, in order to accomplish all these
+things, it is necessary, as in primitive times, to believe,
+to believe always. The twentieth century
+will see many others."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Doctor! Doctor!" cried poor little Bernardet,
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;242]</span>
+much moved. "I do not wish to be the
+ignoramus that I am, the father of a family, who
+has mouths to feed, and I beg of you to take me as
+a sweeper in your laboratory."</p>
+
+<p>He departed, enthused by the interview. Henceforth
+he could say that, he, the ignorant one, had,
+by his seemingly foolish conviction, proved the
+leader of an experiment which had been abandoned
+for some years; and the humble police
+officer had reopened the nearly closed door to
+criminal instruction.</p>
+
+<p>A scruple, moreover, came to him; a doubt, an
+agony, and he wished to share it with M. Ginory.</p>
+
+<p>All the same, with the admirable invention, he
+had caused an innocent man to be arrested. This
+thought made him very uneasy. He had produced
+a power which, instead of striking the guilty, had
+overthrown an unhappy man, and it was this
+famous discovery of Dr. Bourion's, persisted in by
+him, which had resulted in this mistake.</p>
+
+<p>"It must be," he thought, "that man may be
+fallible even in the most marvelous discoveries. It
+is frightful! It is perhaps done to make us more
+prudent. Prudent and modest!"</p>
+
+<p>Doubt now seized him. Must he stop there in
+these famous experiments which ended in this lie?
+Ought he abandon all research on a road which
+ended in a cul-de-sac? And he confided that unhappy
+scruple to the Examining Magistrate, with
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;243]</span>
+whom the chances of the service had put him in
+sympathy. M. Ginory not only was interested in
+strange discoveries, but he was always indulgent
+toward the original, little Bernardet.</p>
+
+<p>"Finally, M. le Juge," said the police officer,
+shaking his head, "I have thought and thought
+about the discovery, our discovery&mdash;that of Dr.
+Bourion. It is subject to errors, our discovery.
+It would have led us to put in prison&mdash;Jacques
+Dantin, and Jacques Dantin was not guilty."</p>
+
+<p>"Oh, yes! M. Bernardet," said the Magistrate,
+who seemed thoughtful, his heavy chin resting on
+his hand. "It ought to make us modest. It is
+the fate of all human discoveries. To err&mdash;to err,
+is human!"</p>
+
+<p>"It is not the less true," responded Bernardet,
+"that all which has passed opens to us the astonishing
+horizon of the unknown"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"The unknowable!" murmured the Magistrate.</p>
+
+<p>"A physician who sometimes asks me to his experiments
+invited me to his house the other evening
+and I saw&mdash;yes saw, or what one calls seeing,
+in a mirror placed before me, by the light of the
+X-rays&mdash;greenish rays which traversed the body&mdash;yes,
+Monsieur, I saw my heart beat, and my lungs
+perform their functions, and I am fat, and a thin
+person could better see himself living and breathing.
+Is it not fantastic, Monsieur Ginory? Would
+not a man have been shut up as a lunatic thirty
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;244]</span>
+years ago who would have pretended that he had
+discovered that? We shall see&mdash;we shall see
+many others!"</p>
+
+<p>"And will it add to the happiness of man? and
+will it diminish grief, wickedness and crime?"</p>
+
+<p>The Magistrate spoke as if to himself, thoughtfully,
+sadly. Something Bernardet said brought a
+smile to his lips.</p>
+
+<p>"This is, Monsieur le Juge, a fine ending of the
+chapter for the second part of your work, 'The
+Duty of a Magistrate Toward Scientific Discoveries.'
+And if the Academy of Moral and Political
+Sciences does not add"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>M. Ginory suddenly turned red and interrupted
+Bernardet with a word and a gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"Monsieur Bernardet!"</p>
+
+<p>"I can only repeat, Monsieur, what public opinion
+thinks and says," said Bernardet, bowing low.
+"There was an illusion to this affair written up.
+An amiable fellow&mdash;that Paul Rodier."</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Monsieur Bernardet, Monsieur Bernardet!"
+laughingly said the Magistrate, "you have
+a weakness for reporters. Do you want me to tell
+you something? You will finish by becoming a
+journalist."</p>
+
+<p>"And you will certainly finish in the habit of a
+member of the Academy, Monsieur Ginory," said
+the little Bernardet, with his air of a mocking
+abbé.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;245]</span></p>
+
+<h3>CHAPTER XVIII.</h3>
+
+<p><span class="smcap">Very</span> often, after his release from prison, Jacques
+Dantin went to the corner of the cemetery at Montmartre,
+where his friend lay. And he always
+carried flowers. It had become to him, since the
+terrible strain of his detention, a necessity, a habit.
+The dead are living! They wait, they understand,
+they listen!</p>
+
+<p>It seemed to Dantin that he had but one aim.
+Alas! What had been the wish, the last dream of
+the dead man would never be realized. That fortune
+which Rovère had intended for the child whom
+he had no right to call his own would go, was going
+to some far-off cousins of whose existence the ex-Consul
+was not even aware perhaps, and whom he
+certainly had never known&mdash;to some indifferent
+persons, chance relatives, strangers.</p>
+
+<p>"I ought not to have waited for him to tell me
+what his intentions were regarding his daughter,"
+Dantin often thought. What would become of her,
+the poor girl, who knew the secret of her birth and
+who remained silent, piously devoting herself to
+the old soldier whose name she bore?</p>
+
+<p>One day in February a sad, gray day, Jacques
+Dantin, thinking of the past Winter so unhappy
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;246]</span>
+of the sad secret grave and heavy, strolled along
+toward that granite tomb near which Rovère slept.
+He recalled the curious crowd which had accompanied
+his dead friend to its last resting place: the
+flowers; the under current of excitement; the
+cortège. Silence now filled the place! Dark
+shadows could be seen here and there between the
+tombs at the end of paths. It was not a visiting
+day nor an hour usual for funerals. This solitude
+pleased Jacques. He felt near to him whom he
+loved.</p>
+
+<p>Louis-Pièrre Rovère. That name, which Moniche
+had had engraved, evoked many remembrances for
+this man who had for a time been suspected of
+assassinating him. All his childhood, all his youth,
+all the past! How quickly the years had fled,
+such ruined years. So much of fever, of agitation&mdash;so
+many ambitions, deceptions, in order to
+end here.</p>
+
+<p>"He is at rest at least," thought Dantin, remembering
+his own life, without aim, without happiness.
+And he also would rest soon, having not even a
+friend in this great city of Paris whom he could
+depend upon to pay him a last visit. A ruined,
+wicked, useless life!</p>
+
+<p>He again bade Rovère good-bye speaking to him,
+calling him thee and thou as of old. Then he went
+slowly away. But at the end of a walk he turned
+around to look once more at the place where his
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;247]</span>
+friend lay. He saw, coming that way, between the
+tombs, as if by some cross alley, a woman in black,
+who was walking directly toward the place he had
+left. He stopped, waiting&mdash;yes, it was to Rovère's
+tomb that she was going. Tall, svelte, and as far
+as Jacques Dantin could see, she was young. He
+said to himself:</p>
+
+<p>"It is his daughter!"</p>
+
+<p>The memory of their last interview came to him.
+He saw his unhappy friend, haggard, standing in
+front of his open safe, searching through his papers
+for those which represented his child's fortune. If
+this was his friend's daughter, it was to him that
+Rovère had looked to assure her future.</p>
+
+<p>He walked slowly back to the tomb. The woman
+in black was now kneeling near the gray stone.
+Bent over, arranging a bouquet of chrysanthemums
+which she had brought. Dantin could see only her
+kneeling form and black draperies.</p>
+
+<p>She was praying now!</p>
+
+<p>Dantin stood looking at her, and when at last
+she arose he saw that she was tall and elegant in
+her mourning robes. He advanced toward her.
+The noise of his footsteps on the gravel caused her
+to turn her head, and Dantin saw a beautiful face,
+young and sad. She had blonde hair and large
+eyes, which opened wide in surprise. He saw the
+same expression of the eyes which Rovère's had
+borne.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;248]</span>
+The young woman instinctively made a movement
+as if to go away, to give place to the newcomer.
+But Dantin stopped her with a gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"Do not go away, Mademoiselle. I am the best
+friend of the one who sleeps here."</p>
+
+<p>She stopped, pale and timid.</p>
+
+<p>"I know very well that you loved him," he added.</p>
+
+<p>She unconsciously let a frightened cry escape
+her and looked helplessly around.</p>
+
+<p>"He told me all," Dantin slowly said. "I am
+Jacques Dantin. He has spoken to you of me, I
+think"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Yes," the young woman answered.</p>
+
+<p>Dantin involuntarily shivered. Her voice had
+the same <i>timbre</i> as Rovère's.</p>
+
+<p>In the silence of the cemetery, near the tomb,
+before that name, Louis-Pièrre Rovère, which
+seemed almost like the presence of his dead friend,
+Dantin felt the temptation to reveal to this girl
+what her father had wished her to know.</p>
+
+<p>They knew each other without ever having met.
+One word was enough, one name was sufficient, in
+order that the secret which united them should
+bring them nearer each other. What Dantin was
+to Rovère, Rovère had told Marthe again and again.</p>
+
+<p>Then, as if from the depths of the tomb, Rovère
+had ordered him to speak. Jacques Dantin, in the
+solemn silence of that City of the Dead, confided
+to the young girl what her father had tried to tell
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;249]</span>
+him. He spoke rapidly, the words, "A legacy&mdash;in
+trust&mdash;a fortune" fell from his lips. But the young
+girl quickly interrupted him with a grand gesture.</p>
+
+<p>"I do not wish to know what any one has told
+you of me. I am the daughter of a man who awaits
+me at Blois, who is old, who loves only me, who
+needs only me, and I need nothing!"</p>
+
+<p>There was in her tone an accent of command, of
+resolution, which Dantin recognized as one of
+Rovère's most remarkable characteristics.</p>
+
+<p>Had Dantin known nothing, this sound in the
+voice, this ardent look on the pale face, would have
+given him a hint or a suspicion, and have obliged
+him to think of Rovère. Rovère lived again in
+this woman in black whom Jacques Dantin saw for
+the first time.</p>
+
+<p>"Then?" asked this friend of the dead man, as
+if awaiting an order.</p>
+
+<p>"Then," said the young girl in her deep voice,
+"when you meet me near this tomb do not speak to
+me of anything. If you should meet me outside
+this cemetery, do not recognize me. The secret
+which was confided to you by the one who sleeps
+there, is the secret of a dead one whom I adored&mdash;<i>my
+mother</i>; and of a living person whom I reverence&mdash;<i>my
+father!</i>"</p>
+
+<p>She accented the words with a sort of tender,
+passionate piety, and Jacques Dantin saw that her
+eyes were filled with tears.</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;250]</span>
+"Now, adieu!" she said.</p>
+
+<p>Jacques still wished to speak of that last confidence
+of the dying man, but she said again:</p>
+
+<p>"Adieu!"</p>
+
+<p>With her hand, gloved in black, she made the
+sign of the Cross, smiled sadly as she looked at the
+tomb where the chrysanthemums lay, then lowering
+her veil she went away, and Dantin, standing near
+the gray tomb, saw her disappear at the end of an
+alley.</p>
+
+<p>The martyr, expiating near the old crippled man,
+a fault of which she was innocent, went back to
+him who was without suspicion; to him who
+adored her and to whom she was, in their poor
+apartment in Blois, his saint and his daughter.</p>
+
+<p>She would watch, she would lose her youth, near
+that old soldier whose robust constitution would
+endure many, many long years. She would pay
+her dead mother's debt; she would pay it by devoting
+every hour of her life to this man whose
+name she bore&mdash;an illustrious name, a name belonging
+to the victories, to the struggles, to the history
+of yesterday&mdash;she would be the hostage, the expiatory
+victim.</p>
+
+<p>With all her life would she redeem the fault of
+that other!</p>
+
+<p>"And who knows, my poor Rovère," said
+Jacques Dantin, "thy daughter, proud of her
+sacrifice, is perhaps happier in doing this!"</p>
+
+<p><span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;251]</span>
+In his turn he left the tomb, he went out of the
+cemetery, he wished to walk to his lodging in the
+Rue Richelieu. He had only taken a few steps
+along the Boulevard, where&mdash;it seemed but yesterday&mdash;he
+had followed (talking with Bernardet)
+behind Rovère's funeral carriage, when he nearly
+ran into a little man who was hurrying along the
+pavement. The police officer saluted him, with a
+shaking of the head, which had in it regret, a little
+confusion, some excuses.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! Monsieur Dantin, what a grudge you
+must have against me!"</p>
+
+<p>"Not at all," said Dantin. "You thought that
+you were doing your duty, and it did not displease
+me to have you try to so quickly avenge my poor
+Rovère."</p>
+
+<p>"Avenge him! Yes, he will be! I would not
+give four sous for Charles Pradès's head to-morrow,
+when he is tried. We shall see each other in
+court. <i>Au revoir</i>, Monsieur Dantin, and all my
+excuses!"</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Au revoir</i>, Monsieur Bernardet, and all my
+compliments!"</p>
+
+<p>The two men separated. Bernardet was on his
+way home to breakfast. He was late. Mme. Bernardet
+would be waiting, and a little red and
+breathless he hurried along. He stopped on hearing
+a newsboy announce the last number of <i>Lutèce</i>.</p>
+
+<p>"Ask for the account of the trial to-morrow:
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;252]</span>
+The inquest by Paul Rodier on the crime of the
+Boulevard de Clichy!"</p>
+
+<p>The newsboy saluted Bernardet whom he knew
+very well.</p>
+
+<p>"Give me a paper!" said the police officer. The
+boy pulled out a paper from the package he was
+carrying, and waved it over his head like a flag.</p>
+
+<p>"Ah! I understand, that interests you, Monsieur
+Bernardet!"</p>
+
+<p>And while the little man looked for the heading
+<i>Lutèce</i> in capital letters&mdash;the title which Paul
+Rodier had given to a series of interviews with
+celebrated physicians, the newsboy, giving Bernardet
+his change, said:</p>
+
+<p>"To-morrow is the trial. But there is no doubt,
+is there, Monsieur Bernardet? Pradès is condemned
+in advance!"</p>
+
+<p>"He has confessed, it is an accomplished fact,"
+Bernardet replied, pocketing his change.</p>
+
+<p>"<i>Au revoir</i> and thanks, Monsieur Bernardet."</p>
+
+<p>And the newsboy, going on his way, cried out:</p>
+
+<p>"Ask for <i>Lutèce</i>&mdash;The Rovère trial! The affair
+to-morrow! Paul Rodier's inquest on the eye of
+the dead man!" His voice was at last drowned in
+the noise of tramways and cabs.</p>
+
+<p>M. Bernardet hurried on. The little ones would
+have become impatient, yes, yes, waiting for him,
+and asking for him around the table at home. He
+looked at the paper which he had bought. Paul
+<span class="pagenum">[Pg&nbsp;253]</span>
+Rodier, in regard to the question which he,
+Bernardet, had raised, had interviewed savants
+physiologists, psychologists, and in good journalistic
+style had published, the evening before the trial,
+the result of his inquest.</p>
+
+<p>M. Bernardet read as he hastened along the long
+titles in capitals in large head lines.</p>
+
+<p>"A Scientific Problem Àpropos of the Rovère
+Affair!"</p>
+
+<p>"Questions of Medical Jurisprudence!"</p>
+
+<p>"The Eye of the Dead Man!"</p>
+
+<p>"Interviews and Opinions of MM. Les Docteurs
+Brouardel, Roux, Duclaux, Pean, Robin, Pozzi,
+Blum, Widal, Gilles de la Tourette"&mdash;&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>Bernardet turned the leaves. The interviews
+filled two pages at least in solid columns.</p>
+
+<p>"So much the better! So much the better!"
+said the police officer enchanted. And hastening
+along even faster, he said to himself:</p>
+
+<p>"I am going to read all that to the children;
+yes, all that&mdash;it will amuse them&mdash;life is a romance
+like any other! More incredible than any other!
+And these questions; the unknown, the invisible,
+all these problems&mdash;how interesting they are! And
+the mystery&mdash;so amusing!"</p>
+
+<p>JULES CLARETIE of the French Academy;
+Mrs. Carlton A. Kingsbury, Translator.</p>
+
+<hr class="hr2"/>
+
+<div class="tnote">
+<h3>Transcriber's Notes</h3>
+
+<hr />
+
+<p>For reasons unknown, the chapter headings show no Chapter XII and no
+Chapter XV. The chapter headings were left unchanged. I am told that
+both a copy of the physical book and the copy at The Interne Archive
+have the same Chapter numbering sequence.</p>
+
+<p>On page 15, a quotation mark was placed before "But since you".</p>
+
+<p>On page 15, a quotation mark was placed before "But I am nothing".</p>
+
+<p>On page 35, "in so unforseen" was replaced with "in so unforeseen".</p>
+
+<p>On page 38, "the wordly magistrate" was replaced with "the worldly
+magistrate".</p>
+
+<p>On page 40, the quotation mark after "which he wished to" was removed.</p>
+
+<p>On page 40, "the study of M. Rovèro" was replaced with "the study of
+M. Rovère".</p>
+
+<p>On page 42, "to be exact, thirty-six" was replaced with "to be exact,
+twenty-six years".</p>
+
+<p>On page 43, "14th of June, 1848" was replaced with "14th of June, 1868".</p>
+
+<p>On page 46, "devination" was replaced with "divination".</p>
+
+<p>On page 49, "reëntered the salon" was replaced with "reentered the
+salon".</p>
+
+<p>On page 50, "des Aubrays" was replaced with "des Audrays".</p>
+
+<p>On page 61, "tatooings" was replaced with "tattooings".</p>
+
+<p>On page 64, a single quotation mark before "Art thou satisfied" was replaced with a double quotation mark.</p>
+
+<p>On page 82, "acqueous" was replaced with "aqueous".</p>
+
+<p>On page 85, "sixteerth" was replaced with "sixteenth".</p>
+
+<p>On page 91, "Mme. Monchie" was replaced with "Mme. Moniche".</p>
+
+<p>On page 99, "chosen by Mr. Rovère" was replaced with "chosen by
+M. Rovère".</p>
+
+<p>On page 101, "mein" was replaced with "mien".</p>
+
+<p>On page 111, the period after "he replied" was replaced with a comma.</p>
+
+<p>On page 111, a paragraph marker was placed after "Why?".</p>
+
+<p>On page 121, the quotation mark was removed after "Rovère's murder?".</p>
+
+<p>On page 122, a period was placed after "of your biography".</p>
+
+<p>On page 129, the quotation mark was removed after "of death."</p>
+
+<p>On page 140, "Rovêre's" was replaced with "Rovère's".</p>
+
+<p>On page 146, "charcteristic" was replaced with "characteristic".</p>
+
+<p>On page 150, "portait which resembled" was replaced with "portrait which
+resembled".</p>
+
+<p>On page 153, "Bernadet left enchanted" was replaced with "Bernardet
+left enchanted".</p>
+
+<p>On page 164, "retain silent" was replaced with "remain silent".</p>
+
+<p>On page 171, "grey" was replaced with "gray".</p>
+
+<p>On page 224, "had came there" was replaced with "had come there".</p>
+
+<p>On page 230, "one mornnig" was replaced with "one morning".</p>
+
+<p>On page 230, "Prades, moreover" was replaced with "Pradès, moreover".</p>
+
+<p>On page 232, "my dear brother-in law" was replaced with "my dear
+brother-in-law".</p>
+
+<p>On page 235, "necessity for fright" was replaced with "necessity for
+flight."</p>
+
+<p>On page 241, "in the labratory" was replaced with "in the laboratory".</p>
+
+<p>On page 250, "chysanthemums" was replaced with "chrysanthemums".</p>
+
+<p>On page 251, "hurring" was replaced with "hurrying".</p>
+
+<p>On page 251, "Prades's" was replaced with "Pradès's".</p>
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Crime of the Boulevard, by Jules Claretie
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+</pre>
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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Crime of the Boulevard, by Jules Claretie
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Crime of the Boulevard
+
+Author: Jules Claretie
+
+Translator: Mrs. Carlton A. Kingsbury
+
+Release Date: October 11, 2010 [EBook #34058]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE CRIME OF THE BOULEVARD ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Darleen Dove, Ernest Schaal, and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                             _The Crime of
+                             The Boulevard_
+
+
+                             [Decoration]
+
+
+                           By JULES CLARETIE
+                      Member of the French Academy
+
+
+                             [Decoration]
+
+
+                             Translated by
+                       MRS. CARLTON A. KINGSBURY
+
+
+                             [Decoration]
+
+
+                         R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
+              Eighteen East Seventeenth Street :: NEW YORK
+
+
+
+
+                            Copyright, 1897
+                                   BY
+                         R. F. FENNO & COMPANY
+
+
+
+
+                       The Crime of the Boulevard
+
+
+
+
+                                  THE
+                         CRIME OF THE BOULEVARD.
+
+                               CHAPTER I.
+
+
+"WHERE does Bernardet live?"
+
+"At the passage to the right--Yes, that house which you see with the
+grating and the garden behind it."
+
+The man to whom a passer-by had given this information hurried away in
+the direction pointed out; although gasping for breath, he tried to run,
+in order to more quickly reach the little house at the end of the
+passage of the Elysee des Beaux Arts. This passage, a sort of
+cul-de-sac, on either side of which were black buildings, strange old
+houses, and dilapidated storehouses, opened upon a boulevard filled with
+life and movement; with people promenading; with the noise of tramways;
+with gaiety and light.
+
+The man wore the dress and had the bearing of a workman. He was very
+short, very fat, and his bald head was bared to the warm October rain.
+He was a workman, in truth, who labored in his concierge lodge, making
+over and mending garments for his neighbors, while his wife looked after
+the house, swept the staircases, and complained of her lot.
+
+Mme. Moniche found life hard and disagreeable, and regretted that it had
+not given her what it promised when, at eighteen, and very pretty, she
+had expected something better than to watch beside a tailor bent over
+his work in a concierge's lodge. Into her life a tragedy had suddenly
+precipitated itself, and Mme. Moniche found, that day, something to
+brighten up her afternoon. Entering a moment before, the apartment
+occupied by M. Rovere, she had found her lodger lying on his back, his
+eyes fixed, his arms flung out, with a gash across his throat!
+
+M. Rovere had lived alone in the house for many years, receiving a few
+mysterious persons. Mme. Moniche looked after his apartment, entering by
+using her own key whenever it was necessary; and her lodger had given
+her permission to come there at any time to read the daily papers.
+
+Mme. Moniche hurried down the stairs.
+
+"M. Rovere is dead! M. Rovere has been murdered! His throat has been
+cut! He has been assassinated!" And, pushing her husband out of the
+door, she exclaimed:
+
+"The police! Go for the police!"
+
+This word "police" awakened in the tailor's mind, not the thought of the
+neighboring Commissary, but the thought of the man to whom he felt that
+he ought to appeal, whom he ought to consult. This man was the good
+little M. Bernardet, who passed for a man of genius of his kind, at the
+Surete, and for whom Moniche had often repaired coats and rehemmed
+trousers.
+
+From the mansion in the Boulevard de Clichy, where Moniche lived, to M.
+Bernardet's house, was but a short distance, and the concierge knew the
+way very well, as he had often been there. But the poor man was so
+stupefied, so overwhelmed, by the sudden appearance of his wife in his
+room, by the brutal revelation which came to him as the blow of a fist,
+by the horrible manner of M. Rovere's death, that he lost his head.
+Horrified, breathless, he asked the first passer-by where Bernardet
+lived, and he ran as fast as he could in the direction pointed out.
+
+Arrived at the grating, the worthy man, a little confused, stopped
+short. He was very strongly moved. It seemed to him that he had been
+cast into the agony of a horrible nightmare. An assassination in the
+house! A murder in the Boulevard de Clichy in broad daylight, just over
+his head, while he was quietly repairing a vest!
+
+He stood looking at the house without ringing. M. Bernardet was, no
+doubt, breakfasting with his family, for it was Sunday, and the police
+officer, meeting Moniche the evening before, had said to him:
+"To-morrow is my birthday."
+
+Moniche hesitated a moment, then he rang the bell. He was not kept
+waiting; the sudden opening of the grating startled him; he pushed back
+the door and entered. He crossed a little court, at the end of which was
+a pavilion; he mounted the three steps and was met on the threshold by a
+little woman, as rosy and fresh as an apple, who, napkin in hand, gayly
+saluted him.
+
+"Eh, Monsieur Moniche!"
+
+It was Mme. Bernardet, a Burgundian woman, about thirty-five years of
+age, trim and coquettish, who stepped back so that the tailor could
+enter.
+
+"What is the matter, M. Moniche?"
+
+Poor Moniche rolled his frightened eyes around and gasped out: "I must
+speak to M. Bernardet."
+
+"Nothing easier," said the little woman. "M. Bernardet is in the garden.
+Yes, he is taking advantage of the beautiful day; he is taking a
+group"----
+
+"What group?"
+
+"You know very well, photography is his passion. Come with me."
+
+And Mme. Bernardet pointed to the end of the corridor, where an open
+door gave a glimpse of the garden at the rear of the house. M.
+Bernardet, the Inspector, had posed his three daughters with their
+mother about a small table, on which coffee had been served.
+
+"I had just gone in to get my napkin, when I heard you ring," Mme.
+Bernardet said.
+
+Bernardet made a sign to Moniche not to advance. He was as plump and as
+gay as his wife. His moustache was red, his double chin smooth-shaven
+and rosy, his eyes had a sharp, cunning look, his head was round and
+closely cropped.
+
+The three daughters, clothed alike in Scotch plaid, were posing in front
+of a photographic apparatus which stood on a tripod. The eldest was
+about twelve years of age; the youngest a child of five. They were all
+three strangely alike.
+
+M. Bernardet, in honor of his birthday, was taking a picture of his
+daughters. The ferret who, from morning till night, tracked robbers and
+malefactors into their hiding places, was taking his recreation in his
+damp garden. The sweet idyl of this hidden life repaid him for his
+unceasing investigations, for his trouble and fatiguing man-hunts
+through Paris.
+
+"There!" he said, clapping the cap over the lens. "That is all! Go and
+play now, my dears. I am at your service, Moniche."
+
+He shut up his photographic apparatus, pulling out the tripod from the
+deep soil in which it was imbedded, while his daughters joyously ran to
+their mother. The young girls stood gazing at Moniche with their great
+blue eyes, piercing and clear. Bernardet turned to look at him, and at
+once divined that something had happened.
+
+"You are as white as your handkerchief, Moniche," he said.
+
+"Ah! Monsieur Bernardet! It is enough to terrify one! There has been a
+murder in the house."
+
+"A murder?"
+
+His face, which had been so gay and careless, suddenly took on a strange
+expression, at once tense and serious; the large blue eyes shone as with
+an inward fire.
+
+"A murder, yes, Monsieur Bernardet. M. Rovere--you did not know him?"
+
+"No."
+
+"He was an original--a recluse. And now he has been assassinated. My
+wife went to his room to read the papers"----
+
+Bernardet interrupted him brusquely:
+
+"When did it happen?"
+
+"Ah! _Dame!_ Monsieur, I do not know. All I know is my wife found the
+body still warm. She was not afraid; she touched it."
+
+"Still warm!"
+
+These words struck Bernardet. He reflected a moment, then he said:
+
+"Come; let us go to your house."
+
+Then, struck with a sudden idea, he added: "Yes, I will take it."
+
+He unfastened his camera from the tripod. "I have three plates left
+which I can use," he said.
+
+Mme. Bernardet, who was standing at a little distance, with the children
+clinging to her skirts, perceived that the concierge had brought
+important news. Bernardet's smiling face had suddenly changed; the
+expression became serious, his glance fixed and keen.
+
+"Art thou going with him?" Mme. Bernardet asked, as she saw her husband
+buckle on a leather bandolier.
+
+"Yes!" he answered.
+
+"Ah! Mon Dieu! my poor Sunday, and this evening--can we not go to the
+little theatre at Montmartre this evening?"
+
+"I do not know," he replied.
+
+"You promised! The poor children! You promised to take them to see
+Closerie des Genets!"
+
+"I cannot tell; I do not know--I will see," the little man said. "My
+dear Moniche, to-day is my fortieth birthday. I promised to take them to
+the theatre--but I must go with you." Turning to his wife, he added:
+"But I will come back as soon as I can. Come, Moniche, let us hasten to
+your M. Rovere."
+
+He kissed his wife on the forehead, and each little girl on both cheeks,
+and, strapping the camera in the bandolier, he went out, followed by the
+tailor. As they walked quickly along Moniche kept repeating: "Still
+warm; yes, Monsieur Bernardet, still warm!"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+
+BERNARDET was quite an original character. Among the agents, some of
+whom were very odd, and among the devoted subalterns, this little man,
+with his singular mind, with his insatiable curiosity, reading anything
+he could lay his hands on, passed for a literary person. His chief
+sometimes laughingly said to him:
+
+"Bernardet, take care! You have literary ambitions. You will begin to
+dream of writing for the papers."
+
+"Oh, no, Monsieur Morel--but what would you?--I am simply amusing
+myself."
+
+This was true. Bernardet was a born hunter. With a superior education,
+he might have become a savant, a frequenter of libraries, passing his
+life in working on documents and in deciphering manuscripts. The son of
+a dairyman; brought up in a Lancastrian school; reading with avidity all
+the daily papers; attracted by everything mysterious which happened in
+Paris; having accomplished his military duty, he applied for admission
+to the Police Bureau, as he would have embarked for the New World, for
+Mexico, or for Tonquin, in order to travel in a new country. Then he
+married, so that he might have, in his checkered existence, which was
+dangerous and wearying,--a haven of rest, a fireside of peaceful joy.
+
+So he lived a double life--tracking malefactors like a bloodhound, and
+cultivating his little garden. There he devoured old books, for which he
+had paid a few sous at some book stall; he read and pasted in old, odd
+leaves, re-bound them himself, and cut clippings from papers. He filled
+his round, bald head with a mass of facts which he investigated,
+classified, put into their proper place, to be brought forth as occasion
+demanded.
+
+He was an inquisitive person, a very inquisitive person, indeed.
+Curiosity filled his life. He performed with pleasure the most fatiguing
+and repulsive tasks that fall to a police officer's lot. They satisfied
+the original need of his nature, and permitted him to see everything, to
+hear everything, to penetrate into the most curious mysteries. To-day,
+in a dress suit with white tie, carelessly glancing over the crowds at
+the opera, to discover the thieves who took opera glasses, which they
+sent to accomplices in Germany to be sold; to-morrow, going in ragged
+clothes to arrest a murderer in some cutthroat den in the Glaciere.
+
+M. Bernardet had taken possession of the office of the most powerful
+bankers, seized their books and made them go away with him in a cab. He
+had followed, by order, the intrigues of more than one fine lady, who
+owed to him her salvation. What if M. Bernardet had thought fit to
+speak? But he never spoke, and reporters came out worsted from any
+attempt at an interview with him. "An interview is silver, but silence
+is gold," he was wont to say, for he was not a fool.
+
+He had assisted at spiritual seances and attended secret meetings of
+Anarchists. He had occupied himself with occult matters, consulting the
+magicians of chance, and he had at his tongue's end the list of
+conspirators. He knew the true names of the famous Greeks who shuffled
+cards as one scouts about under an assumed name. The gambling hells were
+all familiar to him; he knew the churches in whose dark corners
+associates assembled to talk of _affairs_, who did not wish to be seen
+in beer shops nor spied upon in cabarets.
+
+Of the millions in Paris, he knew the secrets of this whirlpool of
+humanity.
+
+Oh! if he had ever become prefect of police, he would have studied his
+Paris, not at a distance, looking up statistics in books, or from the
+windows of a police bureau, but in the streets, in wretched lodgings, in
+hovels, in the asylums of misery and of crime. But Bernardet was not
+ambitious. Life suited him very well as he found it. His good wife had
+brought to him a small dower, and Bernardet, content with this poor
+little fortune, found that he had all the power he wanted--the power,
+when occasion demanded, of putting his hand on the shoulder of a former
+Minister and of taking a murderer by the throat.
+
+One day a financier, threatened with imprisonment in Mazas, pleased him
+very much. Bernardet entered his office to arrest him. He did not wish
+to have a row in the bank. The police officer and banker found
+themselves alone, face to face, in a very small room, a private office,
+with heavy curtains and a thick carpet, which stifled all noise.
+
+"Fifty thousand francs if you will let me escape," said the banker.
+
+"Monsieur le Comte jests"----
+
+"A hundred thousand!"
+
+"The pleasantry is very great, but it is a pleasantry."
+
+Then the Count, very pale, said: "And what if I crack your head?"
+
+"My brother officers are waiting for me," Bernardet simply replied.
+"They know that our interview does not promise to be a long one, and
+this last proposition, which I wish to forget like the others, would
+only aggravate, I believe, if it became known, M. le Comte's case."
+
+Two minutes afterward the banker went out, preceding Bernardet, who
+followed him with bared head. The banker said to his employes, in an
+easy tone: "Good-by for the moment, Messieurs, I will return soon."
+
+It was also Bernardet who, visiting the Bank Hauts-Plateaux, said to his
+chief: "Monsieur Morel, something very serious is taking place there."
+
+"What is it, Bernardet?"
+
+"I do not know, but there is a meeting of the bank directors, and
+to-day, I saw two servants carry a man in there in an invalid's chair.
+It was the Baron de Cheylard."
+
+"Well?"
+
+"Baron Cheylard, in his quality of ex-Senator of the Second Empire, of
+ex-President of the Council, an ex-Commissioner of Industrial
+Expositions, is Grand Cross of the Legion of Honor. Grand Cross--that is
+to say, that he cannot be pursued only after a decision of the Council
+of the Order. And then, you understand--if the Bank of Hauts-Plateaux
+demands the presence of its Vice-president, the Baron of Cheylard,
+paralyzed, half dead"----
+
+"It means that it has need of a thunderbolt?"
+
+"The Grand Cross, Monsieur. They would hesitate to deliver up to us the
+Grand Cross."
+
+"You are right, Bernardet. The bank must be in a bad fix. And you are a
+very keen observer. The mind of a literary man, Bernardet."
+
+"Oh, rather a photographic eye, Monsieur Morel. The habit of using a
+kodak."
+
+Thus Bernardet passed his life in Paris. Capable of amassing a fortune
+in some Tricoche Agency if he had wished to exploit, for his own
+benefit, his keen observing powers, he thought only of doing his duty,
+bringing up his little girls and loving his wife. Mme. Bernardet was
+amazed at the astonishing stories which her husband often related to
+her, and very proud that he was such an able man.
+
+M. Bernardet hurried toward M. Rovere's lodgings and Moniche trotted
+along beside him. As they neared the house they saw that a crowd had
+begun to collect.
+
+"It is known already," Moniche said. "Since I left they have begun"----
+
+"If I enter there," interrupted the officer, "it is all right. You have
+a right to call any one you choose to your aid. But I am not a
+Magistrate. You must go for a Commissary of Police."
+
+"Oh, M. Bernardet," Moniche exclaimed. "You are worth more than all the
+Commissaries put together."
+
+"That does not make it so. A Commissary is a Commissary. Go and hunt for
+one."
+
+"But since you are here"----
+
+"But I am nothing. We must have a magistrate."
+
+"You are not a magistrate, then?"
+
+"I am simply a police spy."
+
+Then he crossed the street.
+
+The neighbors had gathered about the door like a swarm of flies around a
+honey-comb. A rumor had spread about which brought together a crowd
+animated by the morbid curiosity which is aroused in some minds of the
+hint of a mystery, and attracted by that strange magnetism which that
+sinister thing, "a crime," arouses. The women talked in shrill tones,
+inventing strange stories and incredible theories. Some of the common
+people hurried up to learn the news.
+
+At the moment Bernardet came up, followed by the concierge, a coupe
+stopped at the door and a tall man got out, asking:
+
+"Where is M. Morel? I wish to see M. Morel."
+
+The Chief had not yet been advised, and he was not there. But the tall
+young man suddenly recognized Bernardet, and laid hold of him, pulling
+him after him through the half-open door, which Moniche hastened to shut
+against the crowd.
+
+"We must call some officers," Bernardet said to the concierge, "or the
+crowd will push in."
+
+Mme. Moniche was standing at the foot of the staircase, surrounded by
+the lodgers, men and women, to whom she was recounting, for the
+twentieth time, the story of how she had found M. Rovere with his throat
+cut.
+
+"I was going in to read the paper--the story--it is very interesting,
+that story. The moment had come when the Baron had insulted the
+American colonel. M. Rovere said to me only yesterday, poor man: 'I am
+anxious to find out which one will be killed--the colonel or the baron.'
+He will never know! And it is he"----
+
+"Mme. Moniche," interrupted Bernardet, "have you any one whom you can
+send for a Commissary?"
+
+"Any one?"
+
+"Yes," added Moniche. "M. Bernardet needs a magistrate. It is not
+difficult to understand."
+
+"A Commissary?" repeated Mme. Moniche. "That is so. A Commissary; and
+what if I go for the Commissary myself, M. Bernardet?"
+
+"All right, provided you do not let the crowd take the house by assault
+when you open the door."
+
+"Fear nothing," the woman said, happy in having something important to
+do, in relating the horrible news to the Commissary how, when she was
+about to enter the room for the purpose of reading, the----
+
+While she was going toward the door Bernardet slowly mounted the two
+flights of stairs, followed by Moniche and the tall young man who had
+arrived in his coupe at a gallop, in order to get the first news of the
+murder and make a "scoop" for his paper.
+
+The news had traveled fast, and his paper had sent him in haste to get
+all the details of the affair which could be obtained.
+
+The three men reached M. Rovere's door. Moniche unlocked it and stepped
+back, Bernardet, with the reporter at his heels, note book in hand,
+entered the room.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III.
+
+
+NOTHING in the ante-chamber indicated that a tragedy had taken place
+there. There were pictures on the walls, pieces of faience, some arms of
+rare kinds, Japanese swords and a Malay creese. Bernardet glanced at
+them as he passed by.
+
+"He is in the salon," said the concierge, in a low tone.
+
+One of the folding doors stood open, and, stopping on the threshold, in
+order to take in the entire aspect of the place, Bernardet saw in the
+centre of the room, lying on the floor in a pool of blood, the body of
+M. Rovere, clothed in a long, blue dressing gown, bound at the waist
+with a heavy cord, which lay in coils on the floor, like a serpent. The
+corpse was extended between the two windows, which opened on the
+Boulevard de Clichy, and Bernardet's first thought was that it was a
+miracle that the victim could have met his death in such a horrible
+manner, two steps from the passers-by on the street.
+
+"Whoever struck the blow did it quickly," thought the police officer. He
+advanced softly toward the body, casting his eye upon the inert mass and
+taking in at a glance the smallest objects near it and the most minute
+details. He bent over and studied it thoroughly.
+
+M. Rovere seemed living in his tragic pose. The pale face, with its
+pointed and well-trimmed gray beard, expressed in its fierce immobility
+a sort of menacing anger. This man of about fifty years had evidently
+died cursing some one in his supreme agony. The frightful wound seemed
+like a large red cravat, which harmonized strangely with the
+half-whitened beard, the end of which was wet with blood.
+
+But what struck Bernardet above everything else, arrested his attention,
+and glued him to the spot, was the look, the extraordinary expression in
+the eyes. The mouth was open, as if to cry out, the eyes seemed to
+menace some one, and the lips about to speak.
+
+They were frightful. Those tragic eyes were wide open, as if transfixed
+by fear or fury.
+
+They seemed fathomless, staring, ready to start from their sockets. The
+eyebrows above them were black and bristling. They seemed living eyes in
+that dead face. They told of a final struggle, of some atrocious duel of
+looks and of words. They appeared, in their ferocious immobility, as
+when they gazed upon the murderer, eye to eye, face to face.
+
+Bernardet looked at the hands.
+
+They were contracted and seemed, in some obstinate resistance, to have
+clung to the neck or the clothing of the assassin.
+
+"There ought to be blood under the nails, since he made a struggle,"
+said Bernardet, thinking aloud.
+
+And Paul Rodier, the reporter, hurriedly wrote, "There was blood under
+the nails."
+
+Bernardet returned again and again to the eyes--those wide-open eyes,
+frightful, terrible eyes, which, in their fierce depths, retained
+without doubt the image or phantom of some nightmare of death.
+
+He touched the dead man's hand. The flesh had become cold and _rigor
+mortis_ was beginning to set in.
+
+The reporter saw the little man take from his pocket a sort of rusty
+silver ribbon and unroll it, and heard him ask Moniche to take hold of
+one end of it; this ribbon or thread looked to Paul Rodier like brass
+wire. Bernardet prepared his kodak.
+
+"Above everything else," murmured Bernardet, "let us preserve the
+expression of those eyes."
+
+"Close the shutters. The darkness will be more complete."
+
+The reporter assisted Moniche in order to hasten the work. The shutters
+closed, the room was quite dark, and Bernardet began his task. Counting
+off a few steps, he selected the best place from which to take the
+picture.
+
+"Be kind enough to light the end of the magnesium wire," he said to the
+concierge. "Have you any matches?"
+
+"No, M. Bernardet."
+
+The police office indicated by a sign of the head, a match safe which he
+had noticed on entering the room.
+
+"There are some there."
+
+Bernardet had with one sweeping glance of the eye taken in everything in
+the room; the fauteuils, scarcely moved from their places; the pictures
+hanging on the walls; the mirrors; the bookcases; the cabinets, etc.
+
+Moniche went to the mantelpiece and took a match from the box. It was M.
+Rovere himself who furnished the light by which a picture of his own
+body was taken.
+
+"We could obtain no picture in this room without the magnesium wire,"
+said the agent, as calm while taking a photograph of the murdered man,
+as he had been a short time ago in his garden. "The light is
+insufficient. When I say: 'Go!' Moniche you must light the wire, and I
+will take three or four negatives. Do you understand? Stand there to my
+left. Now! Attention!"
+
+Bernardet took his position and the porter stood ready, match and wire
+in hand, like a gunner who awaits the order to fire.
+
+"Go!" said the agent.
+
+A rapid, clear flame shot up; and suddenly lighted the room.
+The pale face seemed livid, the various objects in the room
+took on a fantastic appearance, in this sort of tempestuous
+apotheosis, and Paul Rodier hastily inscribed on his writing pad:
+"Picturesque--bizarre--marvelous--devilish--suggestive."
+
+"Let us try it again," said M. Bernardet.
+
+For the third time in this weird light the visage of the dead man
+appeared, whiter, more sinister, frightful; the wound deeper, the gash
+redder; and the eyes, those wide-open, fixed, tragic, menacing, speaking
+eyes--eyes filled with scorn, with hate, with terror, with the ferocious
+resistance of a last struggle for life; immovable, eloquent--seemed
+under the fantastic light to glitter, to be alive, to menace some one.
+
+"That is all," said Bernardet, very softly. "If with these three
+negatives"----
+
+He stopped to look around toward the door, which was closed. Someone was
+raining ringing blows on the door, loud and imperative.
+
+"It is the Commissary; open the door, Moniche."
+
+The reporter was busy taking notes, describing the salon, sketching it,
+drawing a plan for his journal.
+
+It was, in fact, the Commissary, who was followed by Mme. Moniche and a
+number of curious persons who had forced their way in when the front
+door was opened.
+
+The Commissary, before entering, took a comprehensive survey of the
+room, and said in a short tone: "Every one must go out. Madame, make all
+these people go out. No one must enter."
+
+There arose an uproar--each one tried to explain his right to be there.
+They were all possessed with an irresistible desire to assist at this
+sinister investigation.
+
+"But we belong to the press!"
+
+"The reporters may enter when they have showed their cards," the
+Commissary replied. "The others--no!" There was a murmur from the crowd.
+
+"The others--no!" repeated the Commissary. He made a sign to two
+officers who accompanied him, and they demanded the reporters' cards of
+identification. The concourse of curious ones rebelled, protested,
+growled and declaimed against the representatives of the press, who took
+precedence everywhere.
+
+"The Fourth Power!" shouted an old man from the foot of the staircase.
+He lived in the house and passed for a correspondent of the Institute.
+He shouted furiously: "When a crime is committed under my very roof, I
+am not even allowed to write an account of it, and strangers, because
+they are reporters, can have the exclusive privilege of writing it up!"
+
+The Commissary did not listen to him, but those who were his
+fellow-sufferers applauded him to the echo. The Commissary shrugged his
+shoulders at the hand-clappings.
+
+"It is but right," he said to the reporter, "that the agents of the
+press should be admitted in preference to any one else. Do you think
+that it is easy to discover a criminal? I have been a journalist, too.
+Yes, at times. In the Quartier, occasionally. I have even written a
+piece for the theatre. But we will not talk of that. Enter! Enter, I beg
+of you--and we shall see"--and elegant, amiable, polished, smiling, he
+looked toward M. Bernardet, and his eyes asked the question: "Where is
+it?"
+
+"Here! M. le Commissaire."
+
+Bernardet stood respectfully in front of his superior officer, as a
+soldier carrying arms, and the Commissary, in his turn, approached the
+body, while the curious ones, quietly kept back by Moniche, formed a
+half circle around the pale and bloody corpse. The Commissary, like
+Bernardet, was struck by the haughty expression of that livid face.
+
+"Poor man!" he said, shaking his head. "He is superb! superb! He reminds
+me of the dead Duke de Guise, in Paul Delaroche's picture. I have seen
+it also at Chantilly, in Gerome's celebrated picture of _Le Duel de
+Pierrot_."
+
+Possibly in speaking aloud his thoughts, the Commissary was talking so
+that the reporters might hear him. They stood, notebooks in hand,
+taking notes, and Paul Rodier, catching the names, wrote rapidly in his
+book: "M. Desbriere, the learned Commissary, so artistic, so well
+disposed toward the press, was at one time a journalist. He noticed that
+the victim's pale face, with its strong personal characteristics,
+resembled the dead Duke de Guise, in Gerome's celebrated picture, which
+hangs in the galleries at Chantilly."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+M. DESBRIERE now began the investigation. He questioned the porter and
+portress, while he studied the salon in detail. Bernardet roamed about,
+examining at very close range each and every object in the room, as a
+dog sniffs and scents about for a trail.
+
+"What kind of a man was your lodger?" was the first question.
+
+Moniche replied in a tone which showed that he felt that his tenant had
+been accused of something.
+
+"Oh! Monsieur le Commissaire, a very worthy man, I swear it!"
+
+"The best man in the world," added his wife, wiping her eyes.
+
+"I am not inquiring about his moral qualities," M. Desbriere said. "What
+I want to know is, how did he live and whom did he receive?"
+
+"Few people. Very few," the porter answered. "The poor man liked
+solitude. He lived here eight years. He received a few friends, but, I
+repeat, a very small number."
+
+M. Rovere had rented the apartment in 1888, he installed himself in his
+rooms, with his pictures and books. The porter was much astonished at
+the number of pictures and volumes which the new lodger brought. It
+took a long time to settle, as M. Rovere was very fastidious and
+personally superintended the hanging of his canvases and the placing of
+his books. He thought that he must have been an artist, although he said
+that he was a retired merchant. He had heard him say one day that he had
+been Consul to some foreign country--Spain or South America.
+
+He lived quite simply, although they thought that he must be rich. Was
+he a miser? Not at all. Very generous, on the contrary. But, plainly, he
+shunned the world. He had chosen their apartment because it was in a
+retired spot, far from the Parisian boulevards. Four or five years
+before a woman, clothed in black, had come there. A woman who seemed
+still young--he had not seen her face, which was covered with a heavy
+black veil--she had visited M. Rovere quite often. He always accompanied
+her respectfully to the door when she went away. Once or twice he had
+gone out with her in a carriage. No, he did not know her name. M.
+Rovere's life was regulated with military precision. He usually held
+himself upright--of late sickness had bowed him somewhat; he went out
+whenever he was able, going as far as the Bois and back. Then, after
+breakfasting, he shut himself up in his library and read and wrote. He
+passed nearly all of his evenings at home.
+
+"He never made us wait up for him, as he never went to the theatre,"
+said Moniche.
+
+The malady from which he suffered, and which puzzled the physicians, had
+seized him on his return from a Summer sojourn at Aix-les-Bains for his
+health. The neighbors had at once noticed the effect produced by the
+cure. When he went away he had been somewhat troubled with rheumatism,
+but when he returned he was a confirmed sufferer. Since the beginning of
+September he had not been out, receiving no visits, except from his
+doctor, and spending whole days in his easy chair or upon his lounge,
+while Mme. Moniche read the daily papers to him.
+
+"When I say that he saw no one," said the porter, "I make a mistake.
+There was that gentleman"----
+
+And he looked at his wife.
+
+"What gentleman?"
+
+Mme. Moniche shook her head, as if he ought not to answer.
+
+"Of whom do you speak?" repeated the Commissary, looking at both of
+them.
+
+At this moment, Bernardet, standing on the threshold of the library
+adjoining the salon, looked searchingly about the room in which M.
+Rovere ordinarily spent his time, and which he had probably left to meet
+his fate. His ear was as quick to hear as his eye to see, and as he
+heard the question he softly approached and listened for the answer.
+
+"What gentleman? and what did he do?" asked the Commissary, a little
+brusquely, for he noticed a hesitation to reply in both Moniche and his
+wife.
+
+"Well, and what does this mean?"
+
+"Oh, well, Monsieur le Commissaire, it is this--perhaps it means
+nothing," and the concierge went on to tell how, one evening, a very
+fine gentleman, and very polished, moreover, had come to the house and
+asked to see M. Rovere; he had gone to his apartment, and had remained a
+long time. It was, he thought, about the middle of October, and Mme.
+Moniche, who had gone upstairs to light the gas, met the man as he was
+coming out of M. Rovere's rooms, and had noticed at the first glance the
+troubled air of the individual. (Moniche already called the gentleman
+_the 'individual,'_) who was very pale and whose eyes were red.
+
+Then, at some time or other, the individual had made another visit to M.
+Rovere. More than once the portress had tried to learn his name. Up to
+this moment she had not succeeded. One day she asked M. Rovere who it
+was, and he very shortly asked her what business it was of hers. She did
+not insist, but she watched the individual with a vague doubt.
+
+"Instinct. Monsieur; my instinct told me"----
+
+"Enough," interrupted M. Desbriere; "if we had only instinct to guide us
+we should make some famous blunders."
+
+"Oh, it was not only by instinct, Monsieur."
+
+"Ah! ah! let us hear it"----
+
+Bernardet, with his eyes fastened upon Mme. Moniche, did not lose a
+syllable of her story, which her husband occasionally interrupted to
+correct her or to complete a statement, or to add some detail. The
+corpse, with mouth open and fiery, ferocious eyes, seemed also to
+listen.
+
+Mme. Moniche, as we already know, entered M. Rovere's apartment whenever
+she wished. She was his landlady, his reader, his friend. Rovere was
+brusque, but he was good. So it was nothing strange when the woman,
+urged by curiosity, suddenly appeared in his rooms, for him to say: "Ah,
+you here? Is that you? I did not call you." An electric bell connected
+the rooms with the concierge lodge. Usually she would reply: "I thought
+I heard the bell." And she would profit by the occasion to fix up the
+fire, which M. Rovere, busy with his reading or writing, had forgotten
+to attend to. She was much attached to him. She did not wish to have him
+suffer from the cold, and recently had entered as often as possible,
+under one pretext or another, knowing that he was ill, and desiring to
+be at hand in case of need. When, one evening, about eight days before,
+she had entered the room while the visitor, whom Moniche called the
+individual, was there, the portress had been astonished to see the two
+men standing before Rovere's iron safe, the door wide open and both
+looking at some papers spread out on the desk.
+
+Rovere, with his sallow, thin face, was holding some papers in his hand,
+and the other was bent over, looking with eager eyes at--Mme. Moniche
+had seen them well--some rent rolls, bills and deeds. Perceiving Mme.
+Moniche, who stood hesitating on the threshold, M. Rovere frowned,
+mechanically made a move as if to gather up the scattered papers. But
+the portress said, "Pardon!" and quickly withdrew. Only--ah! only--she
+had time to see, to see plainly the iron safe, the heavy doors standing
+open, the keys hanging from the lock, and M. Rovere in his dressing
+gown; the official papers, yellow and blue, others bearing seals and a
+ribbon, lying there before him. He seemed in a bad humor, but said
+nothing. Not a word.
+
+"And the other one?"
+
+The other man was as pale as M. Rovere. He resembled him, moreover. It
+was, perhaps, a relative. Mme. Moniche had noticed the expression with
+which he contemplated those papers and the fierce glance which he cast
+at her when she pushed open the door without knowing what sight awaited
+her. She had gone downstairs, but she did not at once tell her husband
+about what she had seen. It was some time afterward. The individual had
+come again. He remained closeted with M. Rovere for some hours. The
+sick man was lying on the lounge. The portress had heard them through
+the door talking in low tones. She did not know what they said. She
+could hear only a murmur. And she had very good ears, too. But she heard
+only confused sounds, not one plain word. When, however, the visitor was
+going away she heard Rovere say to him: "I ought to have told all
+earlier."
+
+Did the dead man possess a secret which weighed heavily upon him, and
+which he shared with that other? And the other? Who was he? Perhaps an
+accomplice. Everything she had said belonged to the Commissary of Police
+and to the press. She had told her story with omissions, with timorous
+looks, with sighs of doubts and useless gestures. Bernardet listened,
+noting each word, the purposes of this portress, the melodramatic gossip
+in certain information in which he verified the precision--all this was
+engraven on his brain, as earlier in the day the expression of the dead
+man's eyes had been reflected in the kodak.
+
+He tried to distinguish, as best he could, the undeniable facts in this
+first deposition, when a woman of the people, garrulous, indiscreet,
+gossiping and zealous, has the joy of playing a role. He mentally
+examined her story, with the interruptions which her husband made when
+she accused the individual. He stopped her with a look, placing his hand
+on her arm and said: "One must wait! One does not know. He had the
+appearance of a worthy man." The woman, pointing out with a grand
+gesture, the body lying upon the floor, said: "Oh, well! And did not M.
+Rovere have the appearance of a worthy man also? And did it hinder him
+from coming to that?"
+
+Over Bernardet's face a mocking little smile passed.
+
+"He always had the appearance of a worthy man," he said, looking at the
+dead man, "and he even seemed like a worthy man who looked at rascals
+with courage. I am certain," slowly added the officer, "that if one
+could know the last thought in that brain which thinks no more, could
+see in those unseeing eyes the last image upon which they looked, one
+would learn all that need be known about that individual of whom you
+speak and the manner of his death."
+
+"Possibly he killed himself," said the Commissary.
+
+But the hypothesis of suicide was not possible, as Bernardet remarked to
+him, much to the great contempt of the reporters who were covering their
+notebooks with a running handwriting and with hieroglyphics. The wound
+was too deep to have been made by the man's own hand. And, besides, they
+would find the weapon with which that horrible gash had been made, near
+at hand. There was no weapon of any kind near the body. The murderer
+had either carried it away with him in his flight or he had thrown it
+away in some other part of the apartment. They would soon know.
+
+They need not even wait for an autopsy to determine that it was an
+assassination. "That is evident," interrupted the Commissary; "the
+autopsy will be made, however."
+
+And, with an insistence which surprised the Commissary a little,
+Bernardet, in courteous tones, evidently haunted by one particular idea,
+begged and almost supplicated M. Desbriere to send for the Attorney for
+the Republic, so that the corpse could be taken as soon as possible to
+the Morgue.
+
+"Poor man!" exclaimed Mme. Moniche. "To the Morgue! To the Morgue!"
+Bernardet calmed her with a word.
+
+"It is necessary. It is the law. Oh, Monsieur le Commissaire, let us do
+it quickly, quickly. I will tell you why. Time will be gained--I mean to
+say, saved--and the criminal found."
+
+Then, while M. Desbriere sent an officer to the telephone office to ask
+for the Attorney for the Republic to come as quickly as possible to the
+Boulevard de Clichy, Mme. Moniche freed her mind to the reporters in
+regard to some philosophical considerations upon human destiny, which
+condemned in so unforeseen, so odiously brutal a manner, a good lodger,
+as respectable as M. Rovere, to be laid upon a slab at the Morgue, like
+a thief or a vagabond--he who went out but seldom, and who "loved his
+home so much."
+
+"The everlasting antithesis of life!" replied Paul Rodier, who made a
+note of his reflection.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V.
+
+
+SOME time passed before the arrival of the Attorney, and through the
+closed Venetian blinds the murmurs of the crowd collected below could be
+heard. The Commissary wrote his report on the corner of a table, by the
+light of a single candle, and now and then asked for some detail of
+Bernardet, who seemed very impatient. A heavy silence had fallen on the
+room; those who a short time before had exchanged observations in loud
+tones, since the Commissary had finished with Mme. Moniche had dropped
+their voices and spoke in hushed tones, as if they were in a sick room.
+Suddenly a bell rang, sending shrill notes through the silent room.
+Bernardet remarked that no doubt, the Attorney had arrived. He looked at
+his watch, a simple, silver Geneva watch, but which he prized highly--a
+present from his wife--and murmured:
+
+"There is yet time." It was, in fact, the Attorney for the Republic, who
+came in, accompanied by the Examining Magistrate, M. Ginory, whom
+criminals called "the vise," because he pressed them so hard when he got
+hold of them. M. Ginory was in the Attorney's office when the officer
+had telephoned to M. Jacquelin des Audrays, and the latter had asked
+him to accompany him to the scene of the murder. Bernardet knew them
+both well. He had more than once been associated with M. Audrays. He
+also knew M. Ginory as a very just, a very good man, although he was
+much feared, for, while searching for the truth of a matter he reserved
+judgment of those whom he had fastened in his vise. M. Audrays was still
+a young man, slender and correct, tightly buttoned up in his redingote,
+smooth-shaven, wearing eyeglasses.
+
+The red ribbon in his buttonhole seemed a little too large, like a
+rosette worn there through coquetry. M. Ginory, on the contrary, wore
+clothes too large for him; his necktie was tied as if it was a black
+cord; his hat was half brushed; he was short, stout and sanguine, with
+his little snub nose and his mouth, with its heavy jaws. He seemed,
+beside the worldly magistrate, like a sort of professor, or savant, or
+collector, who, with a leather bag stuffed with books, seemed more
+fitted to pore over some brochures or precious old volumes than to spend
+his time over musty law documents. Robust and active, with his
+fifty-five years, he entered that house of crime as an expert
+topographist makes a map, and who scarcely needs a guide, even in an
+unknown country. He went straight to the body, which, as we have said,
+lay between the two front windows, and both he and M. Audrays stood a
+moment looking at it, taking in, as had the others, all the details
+which might serve to guide them in their researches. The Attorney for
+the Republic asked the Commissary if he had made his report, and the
+latter handed it to him. He read it with satisfied nods of his head;
+during this time Bernardet had approached M. Ginory, saluted him and
+asked for a private interview with a glance of his eye; the Examining
+Magistrate understood what he meant.
+
+"Ah! Is it you, Bernardet? You wish to speak to me?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur Ginory. I beg of you to get the body to the dissecting
+room for the autopsy as soon as possible." He had quietly and almost
+imperceptibly drawn the Magistrate away toward a window, away from the
+reporters, who wished to hear every word that was uttered, where he had
+him quite by himself, in a corner of the room near the library door.
+
+"There is an experiment which must be tried, Monsieur, and it ought to
+tempt a man like you," he said.
+
+Bernardet knew very well that, painstaking even to a fault, taken with
+any new scientific discoveries, with a receptive mind, eager to study
+and to learn, M. Ginory would not refuse him any help which would aid
+justice. Had not the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences crowned,
+the year before, M. Ginory's book on "The Duties of a Magistrate to the
+Discoveries of Science?"
+
+The word "experiment" was not said in order to frighten M. Ginory.
+
+"What do you mean by that, Bernardet?" the Magistrate asked. Bernardet
+shook his head as if to intimate that the explanation was too long to
+give him there. They were not alone. Some one might hear them. And if a
+journal should publish the strange proposition which he wished to----
+
+"Ah! Ah!" exclaimed the Examining Magistrate, "then it is something
+strange, your experiment?"
+
+"Any Magistrate but you would think it wild, unreasonable, or
+ridiculous, which is worse. But you--oh! I do not say it to flatter you,
+Monsieur," quickly added the police officer, seeing that the praise
+troubled this man, who always shrank from it. "I speak thus because it
+is the very truth, and any one else would treat me as crack-brained. But
+you--no!"
+
+M. Ginory looked curiously at the little man, whose attitude was humble
+and even supplicating, and seemed to seek a favorable response, and
+whose eyes sparkled and indicated that his idea was no common one.
+
+"What is that room there?" asked M. Ginory, pointing to the half-open
+library door.
+
+"It is the study of M. Rovere--the victim"----
+
+"Let us go in there," said M. Ginory.
+
+In this room no one could hear them; they could speak freely. On
+entering, the Examining Magistrate mechanically cast his eye over the
+books, stopping at such and such a title of a rare work, and, seating
+himself in a low, easy chair, covered with Caramanie, he made a sign to
+the police officer to speak. Bernardet stood, hat in hand, in front of
+him.
+
+"M. le Juge," Bernardet began, "I beg your pardon for asking you to
+grant me an interview. But, allowing for the difference in our
+positions, which is very great, I am, like you, a scholar; very curious.
+I shall never belong to the Institute, and you will"----
+
+"Go on, Bernardet."
+
+"And you will belong to it, M. Ginory, but I strive also, in my lower
+sphere, to keep myself _au courant_ with all that is said and with all
+that is written. I was in the service of the Academy when your beautiful
+work was crowned, and when the perpetual secretary spoke of those
+Magistrates who knew how to unite the love of letters with a study of
+justice; I thought that lower down, much lower down on the ladder, M. le
+Juge, he might have also searched for and found some men who studied to
+learn and to do their best in doing their duty."
+
+"Ah! I know you, Bernardet. Your chief has often spoken of you."
+
+"I know that M. Leriche is very good to me. But it is not for me to
+boast of that. I wish only to inspire confidence in you, because what I
+wish to say to you is so strange--so very strange"----
+
+Bernardet suddenly stopped. "I know," he began, "that if I were to say
+to a physician what I am about to say to you he would think I ought to
+be shut up in Sainte-Anne. And yet I am not crazy, I beg of you to
+believe. No! but I have searched and searched. It seems to me that there
+is a mass of inventions, of discoveries, which we police officers ought
+to make use of. And, although I am a sub-Inspector"----
+
+"Go on! Go on!" said the Magistrate, quickly, with a movement of the
+head toward the open door of the salon, where the Attorney for the
+Republic was conducting the investigation, and his nod seemed to say:
+"They are at work in there--let us make haste."
+
+"I will be as brief as possible," said Bernardet, who understood what he
+meant.
+
+"Monsieur," (and his tone became rapid, precise, running up and down
+like a ball), "thirty years, or, rather, to be exact, twenty-six years
+ago, some American journals, not political, but scientific, published
+the fact that the daguerrotype--we have made long strides since then in
+photography--had permitted them to find in the retina of a murdered
+man's eye the image of the one who struck him."
+
+"Yes, I know," said M. Ginory.
+
+"In 1860, I was too young, and I had no desire to prove the truth of
+this discovery. I adore photography as I adore my profession. I pass my
+leisure hours in taking instantaneous pictures, in developing them,
+printing, and finishing them. The idea of what I am about to propose to
+you came to me by chance. I bought upon one of the quays a volume of the
+Societe de Medicine Legale of 1869, in which Dr. Vernois gives an
+account of a communication sent to the society by a physician, who also
+sent photographic proofs, thus indorsed: 'Photographs taken of the
+retina of a woman assassinated the 14th of June, 1868.'"
+
+"Yes," again said M. Ginory. "It was a communication from Dr. Bourion,
+of Darnez."
+
+"Precisely."
+
+"And the proof sent by the Doctor showed the instant when, after
+striking the mother, the assassin killed the child, while the dog sprang
+toward the little carriage in which the little one lay."
+
+"Yes, Monsieur Ginory."
+
+"Oh, well, but my poor Bernardet, Dr. Vernois, since you have read his
+report"----
+
+"By chance, Monsieur, I found it on a book stall and it has kept running
+in my head ever since, over and over and over again."
+
+"Dr. Vernois, my poor fellow, made many experiments. At first the proof
+sent was so confused, so hazy, that no one who had not seen what
+Bourion had written could have told what it was. If Vernois, who was a
+very scientific man, could find nothing--nothing, I repeat--which
+justified Dr. Bourion's declarations, what do you expect that any one
+else could make of those researches? Do not talk any more or even think
+any more about it."
+
+"I beg your pardon, Monsieur Ginory; one can and ought to think about
+it. In any case, I am thinking about it."
+
+A smile of doubt crossed M. Ginory's lips. Bernardet quickly added:
+"Photography of the invisible has been proven. Are not the Roentgen
+Rays, the famous X Rays, as incredible as that photography can find the
+image of a murderer on the retina of a dead person's eye? They invent
+some foolish things, those Americans, but they often presage the truth.
+Do they not catch, by photography, the last sighs of the dying? Do they
+not fix upon the film or on plates that mysterious thing which haunts
+us, the occult? They throw bridges across unknown abysses as over great
+bodies of water or from one precipice to another, and they reach the
+other side. I beg your pardon, Monsieur," and the police officer stopped
+short in his enthusiastic defence as he caught sight of M. Ginory's
+astonished face; "I seem to have been making a speech, a thing I
+detest."
+
+"Why do you say that to me? Because I looked astonished at what you have
+told me? I am not only surprised, I am charmed. Go on! Go on!"
+
+"Oh! well, what seemed folly yesterday will be an established fact
+to-morrow. A fact is a fact. Dr. Vernois had better have tested again
+and again his contradictory experiments. Dr. Bourion's experiments had
+preceded his own. If Dr. Vernois saw nothing in the picture taken of the
+retina of the eye of the woman assassinated June 14, 1868, I have seen
+something--yes, I have seen with a magnifying glass, while studying
+thoroughly the proof given to the society and reproduced in the bulletin
+of Volume I., No. 2, of 1870; I have seen deciphered the image which Dr.
+Bourion saw, and which Dr. Vernois did not see. Ah! it was confused, the
+proof was hazy. It was scarcely recognizable, I confess. But there are
+mirrors which are not very clear and which reflect clouded vision;
+nevertheless, the image is there. And I have seen, or what one calls
+seen, the phantom of the murderer which Dr. Bourion saw, and which
+escaped the eyes of the member of the Academy of Medicine and of the
+Hygiene Council, Honorary Physician of the Hospital, if you please."
+
+M. Ginory, who had listened to the officer with curiosity, began to
+laugh, and remarked to Bernardet that, according to this reasoning,
+illustrated medical science would find itself sacrificed to the
+instinct, the divination of a provincial physician, and that it was only
+too easy to put the Academicians in the wrong and the Independents in
+the right.
+
+"Oh, Monsieur, pardon; I put no one in the right or wrong. Dr. Bourion
+believed that he had made a discovery. Dr. Vernois was persuaded that
+Dr. Bourion had discovered nothing at all. Each had the courage of his
+conviction. What I contest is that, for twenty-six years, no one has
+experimented, no one has made any researches, since the first
+experiment, and that Dr. Bourion's communication has been simply dropped
+and forgotten."
+
+"I ask your pardon in my turn, Bernardet," replied M. Ginory, a little
+quizzically. "I have also studied the question, which seems to me a
+curious"----
+
+"Have you photographed any yourself, M. Ginory?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Ah! There is where the proof is."
+
+"But in 1877, the very learned Doyen of the Academy of Medicine, M.
+Brouardel, whose great wisdom, and whose sovereign opinion was law, one
+of those men who is an honor to his country, told me that when he was in
+Heidelberg he had heard Professor Kuhne say that he had studied this
+same question; he had made impressions of the retina of the eye in the
+following cases: After the death of a dog or a wolf, he had taken out
+the eye and replaced it with the back part of the eye in front; then he
+took a very strong light and placed it in front of the eye and between
+the eye and the light he placed a small grating. This grating, after an
+exposure of a quarter of an hour, was visible upon the retina. But those
+are very different experiments from the ones one hears of in America."
+
+"They could see the bars in the grating? If that was visible, why could
+not the visage of the murderer be found there?"
+
+"Eh! Other experiments have been attempted, even after those of which
+Professor Kuhne told our compatriot. Every one, you understand, has
+borne only negative results, and M. Brouardel could tell you, better
+than I, that in the physiological and oculistic treatises, published
+during the last ten years, no allusion has been made to the preservation
+of the image on the retina after death. It is an _affair classe_,
+Bernardet."
+
+"Ah! Monsieur, yet"--and the police officer hesitated. Shaking his head,
+he again repeated: "Yet--yet!"
+
+"You are not convinced?"
+
+"No, Monsieur Ginory, and shall I tell you why? You, yourself, in spite
+of the testimony of illustrious savants, still doubt. I pray you to
+pardon me, but I see it in your eyes."
+
+"That is still another way to use the retina," said Ginory, laughing.
+"You read one's thoughts."
+
+"No, Monsieur, but you are a man of too great intelligence to say to
+yourself that there is nothing in this world _classe_, that every matter
+can be taken up again. The idea has come to me to try the experiment if
+I am permitted. Yes, Monsieur, those eyes, did you see them, the eyes of
+the dead man? They seemed to speak; they seemed to see. Their expression
+is of lifelike intensity. They see, I tell you, they see! They perceive
+something which we cannot see, and which is frightful. They bear--and no
+one can convince me to the contrary--they bear on the retina the
+reflection of the last being whom the murdered man saw before he died.
+They keep it still, they still retain that image. They are going to hold
+an autopsy; they will tell us that the throat is cut. Eh! Parbleu! We
+know it well. We see it for ourselves. Moniche, the porter, knows it as
+well as any doctor. But when one questions those eyes, when one searches
+in that black chamber where the image appears as on a plate, when one
+demands of those eyes their secret, I am convinced that one will find
+it."
+
+"You are obstinate, Bernardet."
+
+"Yes, very obstinate, Monsieur Ginory, and very patient. The pictures
+which I took with my kodak will give us the expression, the interior, so
+to speak; those which we would take of the retina would reveal to us the
+secret of the agony. And, moreover, unless I deceive myself, what
+danger attends such an experiment? One opens the poor eyes, and that is
+sinister, certainly, but when one holds an autopsy at the Morgue, when
+one enlarges the gash in the throat in order to study it, when one
+dissects the body, is it any more respectful or proper? Ah! Monsieur, if
+I but had your power"----
+
+M. Ginory seemed quite struck with all that the police officer had said
+to him, but while he still held to his convictions, he did not seem
+quite averse to trying the experiment. Who can say to science "Halt!"
+and impose upon it limits which cannot be passed? No one!
+
+"We will see, Bernardet."
+
+And in that "we will see" there was already a half promise.
+
+"Ah! if you only will, and what would it cost you?" added Bernardet,
+still urgent; indeed, almost suppliant.
+
+"Let us finish this now. They are waiting for me," said the Examining
+Magistrate.
+
+As he left M. Rovere's study, he instinctively cast a glance at the rare
+volumes, with their costly bindings, and he reentered the salon where M.
+Jacquelin des Audrays had, without doubt, finished his examination.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+THE attorney for the Republic called in the Examining Magistrate.
+Nothing more was to be done. The Magistrate had studied the position of
+the corpse, examined the wound, and now, having told M. Ginory his
+impressions, he did not hide from him his belief that the crime had been
+committed by a professional, as the stroke of the knife across the
+throat had been given neatly, scientifically, according to all the
+established rules.
+
+"One might well take it for the work of a professional butcher."
+
+"Yes, without doubt, M. Ginory; but one does not know. Brute force--a
+strong blow--can produce exactly what science can."
+
+More agitated than he wished to appear by the strange conversation
+between the Agent of Surete and himself, the Examining Magistrate stood
+at the foot of the corpse and gazed, with a fixity almost fierce, not at
+the gaping wound of which M. Jacquelin des Audrays had spoken to him,
+but at those eyes,--those fixed eyes, those eyes which no opacity had
+yet invaded, which, open, frightful, seemingly burning with anger,
+menacing, full of accusations of some sort and animated with vengeance,
+gave him a look, immovable, most powerful.
+
+It was true! it was true! They lived! those eyes spoke. They cried to
+him for justice. They retained the expression of some atrocious vision:
+the expression of violent rage. They menaced some one--who? If the
+picture of some one was graven there, was it not the last image
+reflected on the little mirror of the retina? What if a face was
+reflected there! What if it was still retained in the depths of those
+wide-open eyes! That strange creature, Bernardet, half crazy, enthused
+with new ideas, with the mysteries which traverse chimerical brains,
+troubled him--Ginory, a man of statistics and of facts.
+
+But truly those dead eyes seemed to appeal, to speak, to designate some
+one. What more eloquent, what more terrible witness could there be than
+the dead man himself, if it was possible for his eyes to speak; if that
+organ of life should contain, shut up within it, preserved, the secret
+of death? Bernardet, whose eyes never left the magistrate's face, ought
+to have been content, for it plainly expressed doubt, a hesitation, and
+the police officer heard him cursing under his breath.
+
+"Folly! Stupidity! Bah! we shall see!"
+
+Bernardet was filled with hope. M. Ginory, the Examining Magistrate,
+was, moreover, convinced that, for the present, and the sooner the
+better, the corpse should be sent to the Morgue. There, only, could a
+thorough and scientific examination be made. The reporter listened
+intently to the conversation, and Mme. Moniche clasped her hands, more
+and more agonized by that word Morgue, which, among the people, produces
+the same terror that that other word, which means, however, careful
+attendance, scientific treatment and safety,--hospital, does.
+
+Nothing was now to be done except to question some of the neighbors and
+to take a sketch of the salon. Bernardet said to the Magistrate: "My
+photograph will give you that!" While some one went out to get a hearse,
+the Magistrates went away, the police officer placed a guard in front of
+the house. The crowd was constantly increasing and becoming more and
+more curious, violently excited and eager to see the spectacle--the
+murdered man borne from his home.
+
+Bernardet did not allow M. Ginory to go away without asking respectfully
+if he would be allowed to photograph the dead man's eye. Without giving
+him a formal answer, M. Ginory simply told him to be present at the
+autopsy at the Morgue. Evidently if the Magistrate had not been already
+full of doubt his reply would have been different. Why did that inferior
+officer have the audacity to give his opinion on the subject of
+conducting a judicial investigation? M. Ginory would long before this
+have sent him about his business if he had not become suddenly
+interested in him. In his quality of Judge he had come to know
+Bernardet's history and his exploits in the service. No more capable
+man, in his line, could be found. He was perfectly and utterly devoted
+to his profession. Some strange tales were told of his methods. It was
+he who once passed an entire night on a bench, pretending intoxication,
+in order to gain sufficient information to enable him to arrest a
+murderer in the morning in a wretched hovel at La Vilette--a murderer
+armed to the teeth. It was Bernardet who, without arms--as all those
+agents--caught the famous bandit, the noted Taureau de la Glaciere, a
+foreign Hercules, who had strangled his mistress. Bernardet arrested him
+by holding to his temple the cold neck of a bottle and saying, "Hands up
+or I fire!" Now what the bandit took for the cold muzzle of a pistol was
+a vial containing some medicine which Bernardet had purchased of a
+pharmacist for his liver.
+
+Deeds of valor against thieves, malefactors and insurrectionists
+abounded in Bernardet's life; and M. Ginory had just discovered in this
+man, whom he believed simply endowed with the activity and keenness of a
+hunting dog, an intelligence singularly watchful, deep and complicated.
+Bernardet, who had nothing more to do until the body should be taken to
+the Morgue, left the house directly after the Magistrates.
+
+"Where are you going?" asked Paul Rodier, the reporter.
+
+"Home. A few steps from here."
+
+"May I go along with you?" asked the journalist.
+
+"To find an occasion to make me speak? But I know nothing! I suspect
+nothing; I shall say nothing!"
+
+"Do you believe that it is the work of a thief, or revenge?"
+
+"I am certain that it was no thief. Nothing in the apartment was
+touched. As for the rest, who knows?"
+
+"M. Bernardet," laughingly said the reporter, as he walked along by the
+officer's side, "you do not wish to speak."
+
+"What good will that do?" Bernardet replied, also laughingly; "it will
+not prevent you from publishing an interview."
+
+"You think so. _Au revoir!_ I must hurry and make my copy. And you?"
+
+"I? A photograph."
+
+They separated, and Bernardet entered his house. His daughters had
+grieved over his sudden departure on Sunday on his fete day. They met
+him with joyous shouts when he appeared, and threw themselves upon him.
+"Papa! Here is papa!"
+
+Mme. Bernardet was also happy. They could go then to the garden and
+finish the picture. But their joy subsided, night had fallen, and
+Bernardet, preoccupied, wished to shut himself up so that he might
+reflect on all that had happened, and perhaps to work a little, even
+to-day.
+
+"It is thy fete day, Bernardet. Wilt thou not rest to-day?"
+
+"I can rest at dinner, dear. Until then, I must use the time reading
+over a mass of evidence."
+
+"Then thou wilt need a lamp?" asked Mme. Bernardet.
+
+"Yes, my dear; light the lamp."
+
+Next to their bedchamber M. Bernardet had fitted up a little room for
+his private use. It was a tiny den, in which was a mahogany table loaded
+with books and papers, and at which he worked when he had time, reading,
+annotating, copying from the papers, and collecting extracts for hours
+at a time. No one was allowed to enter this room, filled with old
+papers. Mme. Bernardet well called it "a nest of microbes." Bernardet
+found pleasure in this sporadic place, which in Summer was stifling. In
+Winter he worked without a fire.
+
+Mme. Bernardet was unhappy as she saw that their holiday was spoiled.
+But she very well knew that when her husband was devoured with
+curiosity, carried away by a desire to elucidate a puzzle, there was
+nothing to be said. He listened to no remonstrances, and the daughters
+knew that when they asked if their father was not coming to renew his
+games with them they were obliged to content themselves with the excuse
+which they knew so well from having heard it so often: "Papa is studying
+out a crime!"
+
+Bernardet was anxious to read over his notes, the verification of his
+hopes, of those so-called certainties of to-day. That is why he wished
+to be alone. As soon as he had closed the door he at once, from among
+the enormous piles of dust-laden books and files of old newspapers, with
+the unerring instinct of the habitual searcher who rummages through book
+stalls, drew forth a gray-covered pamphlet in which he had read, with
+feverish astonishment, the experiments and report of Dr. Vernois upon
+the application of photography in criminal researches. He quickly seated
+himself, and with trembling fingers eagerly turned over the leaves of
+the book so often read and studied, and came to the report of the member
+of the Academy of Medicine; he compared it with the proof submitted by
+Dr. Bourion, of the Medical Society, in which it was stated that the
+most learned savants had seen nothing.
+
+"Seen nothing, or wished to see nothing, perhaps!" he murmured.
+
+The light fell upon the photograph which had been sent, a long time
+before, to the Society, and Bernardet set himself to study out the old
+crime with the most careful attention; with the passion of a
+paleographer deciphering a palimpsest. This poor devil of a police
+officer, in his ardent desire to solve the vexing problem, brought to it
+the same ardor and the same faith as a bibliophile. He went over and
+over with the method of an Examining Magistrate all that old forgotten
+affair, and in the solitude and silence of his little room the last
+reflections of the setting sun falling on his papers and making pale the
+light of his lamp, he set himself the task of solving, like a
+mathematical problem, that question which he had studied, but which he
+wished to know from the very beginning, without any doubts, before
+seeing M. Ginory again at the Morgue, beside the body of M. Rovere. He
+took his pamphlet and read: "The photograph sent to the Society of
+Medical Jurisprudence by Dr. Bourion taken upon the retina of the eye of
+a woman who had been murdered the 14th of June, 1868, represents the
+moment when the assassin, after having struck the mother, kills the
+infant, and the dog belonging to the house leaps toward the unfortunate
+little victim to save it."
+
+Then studying, turn by turn, the photograph yellowed by time, and the
+article which described it, Bernardet satisfied himself, and learned the
+history by heart.
+
+M. Gallard, General Secretary of the Society, after having carefully
+hidden the back part of the photograph, had circulated it about among
+the members with this note: "Enigma of Medical Jurisprudence." And no
+one had solved the tragic enigma. Even when he had explained, no one
+could see in the photograph what Dr. Bourion saw there. Some were able
+on examining that strange picture to see in the black and white haze
+some figures as singular and dissimilar as those which the amiable
+Polonius perceived in the clouds under the suggestion of Hamlet.
+
+Dr. Vernois, appointed to write a report on Dr. Bourion's communication,
+asked him then how the operation had been conducted, and Dr. Bourion had
+given him these details, which Bernardet was now reading and studying:
+The assassination had taken place on Sunday between noon and 4 o'clock;
+the extraction of the eyes from their orbits had not been made until the
+following day at 6 o'clock in the evening.
+
+The experiment on the eyes, those terribly accusing eyes of this dead
+man, could be made twenty-four hours earlier than that other experiment.
+The image--if there was any image--ought to be, in consequence, more
+clearly defined than in Dr. Bourion's experiment.
+
+"About 6 o'clock in the evening," thought Bernardet, "and the
+photographic light was sufficient."
+
+Dr. Bourion had taken pictures of both of the child's eyes as well as
+both of the mother's eyes. The child's eyes showed nothing but hazy
+clouds. But the mother's eyes were different. Upon the left eye, next to
+a circular section back of the iris, a delicately marked image of a
+dog's head appeared. On the same section of the right eye, another
+picture; one could see the assassin raising his arm to strike and the
+dog leaping to protect his little charge.
+
+"With much good will, it must be confessed," thought Bernardet, looking
+again and again at the photograph, "and with much imagination, too. But
+it was between fifty and fifty-two hours after the murder that the proof
+was taken, while this time it will be while the body is still warm that
+the experiment will be tried."
+
+Seventeen times already had Dr. Vernois experimented on animals;
+sometimes just after he had strangled them, again when they had died
+from Prussic acid. He had held in front of their eyes a simple object
+which could be easily recognized. He had taken out the eyes and hurried
+with them to the photographer. He had, in order to better expose the
+retina to photographic action, made a sort of Maltese cross, by making
+four incisions on the edge of the sclerotic. He removed the vitreous
+humor, fixed it on a piece of card with four pins and submitted the
+retina as quickly as possible to the camera.
+
+In re-reading the learned man's report, Bernardet studied, pored over,
+carefully scrutinized the text, investigated the dozen proofs submitted
+to the Society of Medical Jurisprudence by Dr. Vernois:
+
+Retina of a cat's eye killed by Prussic acid; Vernois had held the
+animal in front of the bars of the cage in which it was confined. No
+result!
+
+Retina of a strangled dog's eye. A watch was held in front of its eyes.
+No result!
+
+Retina of a dog killed by a strangulation. A bunch of shining keys was
+held in front of his eyes. No result!
+
+Retina of the eye of a strangled dog. An eyeglass held in front of its
+eyes. Photograph made two hours after death. Nothing! In all Dr.
+Vernois's experiments--nothing! Nothing!
+
+Bernardet repeated the word angrily. Still he kept on; he read page
+after page. But all this was twenty-six years ago--photography has made
+great strides since then. What wonderful results have been obtained! The
+skeleton of the human body seen through the flesh! The instantaneous
+photograph! The kinetoscopic views! Man's voice registered for eternity
+in the phonograph! The mysterious dragged forth into the light of day!
+Many hitherto unknown secrets become common property! The invisible,
+even the invisible, the occult, placed before our eyes, as a spectacle!
+
+"One does not know all that may be done with a kodak," murmured
+Bernardet.
+
+As he ascertained, in re-reading Dr. Vernois's report on "The
+Application of Photography to Medical Jurisprudence," the savant
+himself, even while denying the results of which Dr. Bourion spoke in
+his communication, devoted himself to the general consideration upon the
+role which photography ought to play in medical jurisprudence. Yes, in
+1869, he asked that in the researches on poisonous substances, where the
+microscope alone had been used, photography should be applied. He
+advocated what in our day is so common, the photographing of the
+features of criminals, their deformities, their scars, their tattooings.
+He demanded that pictures should be taken of an accused person in many
+ways, without wigs and with them, with and without beards, in diverse
+costumes.
+
+"These propositions," thought Bernardet, "seem hardly new; it is
+twenty-six years since they were discovered, and now they seem as
+natural as that two and two make four. In twenty-six years from now, who
+knows what science will have done?
+
+"Vernois demanded that wounds be reproduced, their size, the instruments
+with which the crime was committed, the leaves of plants in certain
+cases of poisoning, the shape of the victim's garments, the prints of
+their hands and feet, the interior view of their rooms, the signature
+of certain accused affected with nervous disorders, parts of bodies and
+of bones, and, in fact, everything in any way connected with the crime.
+It was said that he asked too much. Did he expect judges to make
+photographs? To-day, everything that Vernois demanded in 1869, has been
+done, and, in truth, the instantaneous photograph has almost superseded
+the minutes of an investigation.
+
+"We photograph a spurious bank note. It is magnified, and, by the
+absence of a tiny dot the proof of the alteration is found. On account
+of the lack of a dot the forger is detected. The savant, Helmholtz, was
+the discoverer of this method of detecting these faults. Two bank notes,
+one authentic, the other a forgery, were placed side by side in a
+stereoscope of strong magnifying power, when the faults were at once
+detected. Helmholtz's experiment probably seemed fantastic to the forger
+condemned by a stereoscope. Oh, well, to-day ought not a like experiment
+on the retina of a dead man's eye give a like result?
+
+"Instruments have been highly perfected since the time when Dr. Bourion
+made his experiments, and if the law of human physiology has not changed
+the seekers of invisible causes must have rapidly advanced in their
+mysterious pursuits. Who knows whether, at the instant of the last
+agony, that the dying person does not put all the intensity of life
+into the retina, giving a hundredfold power to that last supreme look?"
+
+At this point of his reflections Bernardet experienced some hesitation.
+While he was not thoroughly acquainted with physiology and philosophy,
+yet he had seen so much, so many things; had known so many strange
+occurrences, and had studied many men. He knew--for he had closely
+questioned wretches who had been saved from drowning at the very last
+possible moment, some of whom had attempted suicide, others who had been
+almost drowned through accident, and each one had told him that his
+whole life, from his earliest recollection, had flashed through his mind
+in the instant of mortal agony. Yes, a whole lifetime in one instant of
+cerebral excitement!
+
+Had savants been able to solve this wonderful mystery? The _resume_ of
+an existence in one vibration! Was it possible? Yet--Bernardet still
+used the word.
+
+And why, in an analogous sensation, could not the look of a dying man be
+seized in an intensity lasting an instant, as memory brought in a single
+flash so many diverse remembrances?
+
+"I know, since it is the imagination, and that the dead cannot see,
+while the image on the retina is a fact, a fact contradicted by wiser
+men than I." Bernardet thought on these mysteries until his head began
+to ache.
+
+"I shall make myself ill over it," he thought. "And there is something
+to be done."
+
+Then in his dusty little room, his brain overexcited, he became enthused
+with one idea. His surroundings fell away from him, he saw
+nothing--everything disappeared--the books, the papers, the walls, the
+visible objects, as did also the objections, the denials, the
+demonstrative impossibilities. And absolute conviction seized him to the
+exclusion of all extraneous surroundings. This conviction was absolute,
+instinctive, irresistible, powerful, filling him with entire faith.
+
+"This unknown thing I will find. What is to be done I will do," he
+declared to himself.
+
+He threw the pamphlet on the table, arose from his chair and descended
+to the dining-room, where his wife and children were waiting for him. He
+rubbed his hands with glee, and his face looked joyous.
+
+"Didst thou discover the trail?" Mme. Bernardet asked very simply, as a
+working woman would ask her husband if he had had a good day. The eldest
+of the little girls rushed toward him.
+
+"Papa, my dear little papa!"
+
+"My darling!"
+
+The child asked her father in a sweet voice: "Art thou satisfied with
+thy crime, papa?"
+
+"We will not talk about that," Bernardet replied. "To table! After
+dinner I will develop the pictures which I have taken with my kodak, but
+let us amuse ourselves now; it is my fete day; I wish to forget all
+about business. Let us dine now and be as happy as possible."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+THE murder of M. Rovere, committed in broad daylight, in a quarter of
+Paris filled with life and movement, caused a widespread sensation.
+There was so much mystery mixed in the affair. What could be ascertained
+about the dead man's life was very dramatically written up by Paul
+Rodier in a sketch, and this, republished everywhere and enlarged upon,
+soon gave to the crime of the Boulevard de Clichy the interest of a
+judicial romance. All that there was of vulgar curiosity in man awoke,
+as atavistic bestiality at the smell of blood.
+
+What was this M. Rovere, former Consul to Buenos Ayres or Havana,
+amateur collector of objects of virtu, member of the Society of
+Bibliophiles, where he had not been seen for a long time? What enemy had
+entered his room for the purpose of cutting his throat? Might he not
+have been assassinated by some thief who knew that his rooms contained a
+collection of works of art? The fete at Montmartre was often in full
+blast in front of the house where the murder had been committed, and
+among the crowd of ex-prison birds and malefactors who are always
+attendant upon foreign kirmesses might not some one of them have
+returned and committed the crime? The papers took advantage of the
+occasion to moralize upon permitting these fetes to be held in the
+outlying boulevards, where vice and crime seemed to spring spontaneously
+from the soil.
+
+But no one, not one journal--perhaps by order--spoke of that unknown
+visitor whom Moniche called _the individual_, and whom the portress had
+seen standing beside M. Rovere in front of the open safe. Paul Rodier in
+his sketch scarcely referred to the fact that justice had a clew
+important enough to penetrate the mystery of the crime, and in the end
+arrest the murderer. And the readers while awaiting developments asked
+what mystery was hidden in this murder. Moniche at times, wore a
+frightened yet important air. He felt that he was an object of curiosity
+to many, the centre of prejudices. The porter and his wife possessed a
+terrible secret. They were raised in their own estimation.
+
+"We shall appear at the trial," said Moniche, seeing himself already
+before the red robes, and holding up his hand to swear that he would
+tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.
+
+And as they sat together in their little lodge they talked the matter
+over and over, and brought up every incident in M. Rovere's life which
+might have a bearing on the case.
+
+"Do you remember the young man who came one day and insisted on seeing
+Monsieur le Consul?"
+
+"Ah! Very well, indeed," said Moniche. "I had forgotten that one. A felt
+hat, his face bronzed, and a droll accent. He had come from away off
+somewhere. He was probably a Spaniard."
+
+"Some beggar, likely. A poor devil whom the Consul had known in America,
+in the Colonies, one knows not where."
+
+"A bad face!" said Moniche. "M. Rovere received him, however, and gave
+him aid, I remember. If the young man had come often, I should think
+that he struck the blow. And also, I ought to add, if there was not the
+other."
+
+"Yes, but there is the other," his wife replied. "There is the one whom
+I saw standing in front of the coupons, and who was looking at those
+other papers with flashing eyes, I give my word. There is that one,
+Moniche, and I am willing to put my hand into the fire and yours, too,
+Moniche, if it is not he."
+
+"If he is the one, he will be found."
+
+"Oh! but if he has disappeared? One disappears very quickly in these
+days."
+
+"We shall see! we shall see! Justice reigns, and we are here!" He said
+that "we are here!" as a grenadier of the guard before an important
+engagement.
+
+They had taken the body to the Morgue. At the hour fixed for the autopsy
+Bernardet arrived. He seemed much excited, and asked M. Ginory if,
+since their conversation in M. Rovere's library, he had reflected and
+decided to permit him to make the experiment--the famous experiment
+reported for so many years as useless, absurd, almost ridiculous.
+
+"With any one but M. Ginory I should not dare to hope," thought the
+police officer, "but he does not sneer at strange discoveries."
+
+He had brought his photographic apparatus, that kodak which he declared
+was more dangerous to the criminal than a loaded weapon. He had
+developed the negatives which he had taken, and of the three, two had
+come out in good condition. The face of the murdered man appeared with a
+clearness which, in the proofs, rendered it formidable as in the
+reality; and the eyes, those tragic, living eyes, retained their
+terrible, accusing expression which the supreme agony had left in them.
+The light had struck full on the eyes--and they spoke. Bernardet showed
+the proofs to M. Ginory. They examined them with a magnifying glass, but
+they showed only the emotion, the agony, the anger of that last moment.
+Bernardet hoped to convince M. Ginory that Bourion's experiment was not
+a failure.
+
+Eleven o'clock was the hour named for the autopsy. Twenty minutes
+before, Bernardet was at the Morgue. He walked restlessly about outside
+among the spectators--some were women, young girls, students, and
+children who were hovering about the place, hoping that some chance
+would permit them to satisfy their morbid curiosity and to enter and
+gaze on those slabs whereon lay--swollen, livid, disfigured--the bodies.
+
+Never, perhaps, in his life had the police officer been so strongly
+moved with a desire to succeed. He brought to his tragic task all the
+ardor of an apostle. It was not the idea of success, the renown, or the
+possibility of advancement which urged him on; it was the joy, the glory
+of aiding progress, of attaching his name to a new discovery. He worked
+for art and the love of art. As he wandered about, his sole thought was
+of his desire to test Dr. Bourion's experiment; of the realization of
+his dream. "Ah! if M. Ginory will only permit it," he thought.
+
+As he formulated that hope in his mind, he saw M. Ginory descend from
+the fiacre; he hurried up to him and saluted him respectfully. Seeing
+Bernardet so moved and the first one on the spot, he could not repress a
+smile.
+
+"I see you are still enthused."
+
+"I have thought of nothing else all night, Monsieur Ginory."
+
+"Well, but," said Monsieur Ginory in a tone which seemed to Bernardet to
+imply hope, "no idea must be rejected, and I do not see why we should
+not try the experiment. I have reflected upon it. Where is the
+unsuitableness?"
+
+"Ah, Monsieur le Juge," cried the agent, "if you permit it who knows but
+that we may revolutionize medical jurisprudence?"
+
+"Revolutionize, revolutionize!" Would the Examining Magistrate yet find
+it an idiotic idea?
+
+M. Ginory passed around the building and entered by a small door opening
+on the Seine. The registrar followed him, and behind him came the police
+agent. Bernardet wished to wait until the doctors delegated to perform
+the autopsy should arrive, and the head keeper of the Morgue advised him
+to possess himself with patience, and while he was waiting to look
+around and see the latest cadavers which had been brought there.
+
+"We have had, in eight days, a larger number of women than men, which is
+rare. And these women were nearly all habitues of the public balls and
+race tracks."
+
+"And how can you tell that?"
+
+"Because they have pretty feet."
+
+Professor Morin arrived with a confrere, a young Pasteurian doctor, with
+a singular mind, broad and receptive, and who passed among his
+companions for a man fond of chimeras, a little retiring, however, and
+giving over to making experiments and to vague dreams. Monsieur Morin
+saluted M. Ginory and presented to him the young doctor, Erwin by name,
+and said to the Magistrate that the house students had probably begun
+the autopsy to gain time.
+
+The body, stripped of its clothing, lay upon the dissecting table, and
+three young men, in velvet skull caps, with aprons tied about their
+waists, were standing about the corpse; they had already begun the
+autopsy. The mortal wound looked redder than ever in the whiteness of
+the naked body.
+
+Bernardet glided into the room, trying to keep out of sight, listening
+and looking, and, above everything, not losing sight of M. Ginory's
+face. A face in which the look was keen, penetrating, sharp as a knife,
+as he bent over the pale face of the murdered man, regarding it as
+searchingly as the surgeons' scalpels were searching the wound and the
+flesh. Among those men in their black clothes, some with bared heads, in
+order to work better; others with hats on, the stretched-out corpse
+seemed like a wax figure upon a marble slab. Bernardet thought of those
+images which he had seen copied from Rembrandt's pictures--the poet with
+the anatomical pincers and the shambles. The surgeons bent over the
+body, their hands busy and their scissors cutting the muscles. That
+wound, which had let out his life, that large wound, like a monstrous
+and grimacing mouth, they enlarged still more; the head oscillated from
+side to side, and they were obliged to prop it with some mats. The eyes
+remained the same, and, in spite of the hours which had passed, seemed
+as living, as menacing and eloquent as the night before; they were,
+however, veiled with something vitreous over the pupils, like the
+amaurosis of death, yet full of that anger, of that fright, or that
+ferocious malediction which was reproduced in a startling manner in the
+negatives taken by Bernardet.
+
+"The secret of the crime is in that look," thought the police agent.
+"Those eyes see, those eyes speak; they tell what they know, they accuse
+some one."
+
+Then, while the professor, his associates and his students went on with
+the autopsy, exchanging observations, following in the mutilated body,
+their researches for the truth, trying to be very accurate as to the
+nature of the wound, the form even of the knife with which it was made,
+Bernardet softly approached the Examining Magistrate and in a low tone,
+timidly, respectfully, he spoke some words, which were insistent,
+however, and pressing, urging the Magistrate to quickly interfere.
+
+"Ah! Monsieur le Juge, this is the moment; you who can do
+everything"----
+
+The Examining Magistrate has, with us, absolute power. He does whatever
+seems to him best. And he wishes to do a thing, because he wishes to do
+it. M. Ginory, curious by nature and because it was his duty,
+hesitated, scratched his ear, rubbed his nose, bit his lips, listened to
+the supplicating murmur of the police officer; but decided not to speak
+just then, and continued gazing with a fixed stare at the dead man.
+
+This thought came to him, moreover, insistent and imperious, that he was
+there to testify in all things in favor of that truth, the discovery of
+which imposed upon him--and suddenly, his sharp voice interrupted the
+surgeon's work.
+
+"Messieurs, does not the expression of the open eyes strike you?"
+
+"Yes; they express admirably the most perfect agony," M. Morin replied.
+
+"And does it not seem," asked the Examining Magistrate, "as if they were
+fixed with that expression on the murderer?"
+
+"Without doubt! The mouth seems to curse and the eyes to menace."
+
+"And what if the last image seen, in fact, that of the murderer, still
+remains upon the retina of the eyes?"
+
+M. Morin looked at the Magistrate in astonishment, his air was slightly
+mocking and the lips and eyes assumed a quizzical expression. But
+Bernardet was very much surprised when he heard one remark. Dr. Erwin
+raised his head and while he seemed to approve of that which M. Ginory
+had advanced, he said: "That image must have disappeared from the
+retina some time ago."
+
+"Who knows?" said M. Ginory.
+
+Bernardet experienced a profound emotion. He felt that this time the
+problem would be officially settled. M. Ginory had not feared ridicule
+when he spoke, and a discussion arose there, in that dissecting room, in
+the presence of the corpse. What had existed only in a dream, in
+Bernardet's little study, became here, in the presence of the Examining
+Magistrate, a member of the Institute, and the young students, almost
+full fledged doctors, a question frankly discussed in all its bearings.
+And it was he, standing back, he, a poor devil of a police officer, who
+had urged this Examining Magistrate to question this savant.
+
+"At the back of the eyes," said the Professor, touching the eyes with
+his scalpel, "there is nothing, believe me. It is elsewhere that you
+must look for your proof."
+
+"But"--and M. Ginory repeated his "Who knows?"--"What if we try it this
+time; will it inconvenience you, my dear Master?" M. Morin made a
+movement with his lips which meant _peuh!_ and his whole countenance
+expressed his scorn. "But, I see no inconvenience." At the end of a
+moment he said in a sharp tone: "It will be lost time."
+
+"A little more, a little less," replied M. Ginory, "the experiment is
+worth the trouble to make it."
+
+M. Ginory had proved without doubt that he, like Bernardet, wished to
+satisfy his curiosity, and in looking at the open eyes of the corpse,
+although in his duties he never allowed himself to be influenced by the
+sentimental or the dramatic, yet it seemed to him that those eyes urged
+him to insist, nay, even supplicated him.
+
+"I know, I know," said M. Morin, "what you dream of in your magistrate's
+brain is as amusing as a tale of Edgar Poe's. But to find in those eyes
+the image of the murderer--come now, leave that to the inventive genius
+of a Rudyard Kipling, but do not mix the impossible with our researches
+in medical jurisprudence. Let us not make romance; let us make, you the
+examinations and I the dissection."
+
+The short tone in which the Professor had spoken did not exactly please
+M. Ginory, who now, a little through self-conceit (since he had made the
+proposition), a little through curiosity, decided that he would not beat
+a retreat. "Is there anything to risk?" he asked. "And it might be one
+chance in a thousand."
+
+"But there is no chance," quickly answered M. Morin. "None--none!"
+
+Then, relenting a little, he entered the discussion, explaining why he
+had no faith.
+
+"It is not I, M. Ginory, who will deny the possibility of such a result.
+But it would be miraculous. Do you believe in miracles, the impressions
+of heat, of the blood, of light, on our tissues are not catalogueable,
+if I may be allowed the expression. The impression on the retina is
+produced by the refraction which is called ethereal, phosphorescent, and
+which is almost as difficult to seize as to weigh the imponderable. To
+think to find on the retina a luminous impression after a certain number
+of hours and days would be, as Vernois has very well said, to think one
+can find in the organs of hearing the last sound which reverberated
+through them. _Peuh!_ Seize the air-bubble at the end of a tube and
+place it in a museum as a curiosity. Is there anything left of it but a
+drop of water which is burst, while of the fleeting vision or the
+passing sound nothing remains."
+
+The unfortunate Bernardet suffered keenly when he heard this. He wished
+to answer. The words came to his lips. Ah! if he was only in M. Ginory's
+place. The latter, with bowed head, listened and seemed to weigh each
+word as it dropped from M. Morin's lips.
+
+"Let us reason it, but," the Professor went on, "since the
+ophthalmoscope does not show to the oculist on the retina, any of the
+objects or beings which a sick man sees--you understand, not one of
+them--how can you think that photography can find that object or being
+on the retina of a dead man's eye?"
+
+He waited for objections from the Examining Magistrate and Bernardet
+hoped that M. Ginory would combat some of the Professor's arguments. He
+had only to say: "What of it? Let us see! Let us experiment!" And
+Bernardet had longed for just these words from him; but the Magistrate
+remained silent, his head still bent. The police agent felt, with
+despair, his chance slipping, slipping away from him, and that never,
+never again would he find a like opportunity to test the experiment.
+Suddenly, the strident tones of Dr. Erwin's voice rung out sharply, like
+an electric bell, and Bernardet experienced a sensation like that of a
+sudden unexpected illumination.
+
+"My dear Master," he respectfully began, "I saw at home in Denmark, a
+poor devil, picked up dying, half devoured by a wolf; and who, when
+taken from the very jaws of the beast, still retained in the eye a very
+visible image in which one could see the nose and teeth of the brute. A
+vision! Imagination, perhaps! But the fact struck me at the time and we
+made a note of it."
+
+"And?" questioned M. Morin, in a tone of raillery.
+
+Bernardet cocked his ears as a dog does when he hears an unusual sound.
+M. Ginory looked at this slender young man with his long blond hair, his
+eyes as blue as the waters of a lake, his face pale and wearing the
+peculiar look common to searchers after the mysterious. The students and
+the others gathered about their master, remained motionless and listened
+intently as to a lecture.
+
+"And," Dr. Erwin went on frigidly, "if we had found absolutely nothing
+we would, at least, have kept silent about an unsuccessful research, it
+is useless to say. Think, then, my dear Master, the exterior objects
+must have imprinted themselves on the retina, did they not? reduced in
+size, according to the size of the place wherein they were reflected;
+they appeared there, they certainly appeared there! There is--I beg your
+pardon for referring to it, but it is to these others (and Dr. Erwin
+designated M. Ginory, his registrar, and Bernardet)--there is in the
+retina a substance of a red color, the _pourpre retinien_, very
+sensitive to the light. Upon the deep red of this membrane objects are
+seen white. And one can fix the image. M. Edmond Perrier, professor in
+the Museum of Natural History, reports (you know it better than I, my
+dear Master), in a work on animal anatomy and physiology which our
+students are all familiar with, that he made an experiment. After
+removing a rabbit's eye, a living rabbit's eye--yes, science is
+cruel--he placed it in a dark room, so that he could obtain upon the
+retina the image of some object, a window for instance, and plunged it
+immediately into a solution of alum and prevented the decomposition of
+the _pourpre retinien_, and the window could plainly be seen, fixed on
+the eye. In that black chamber which we have under our eyebrows, in the
+orbit, is a storehouse, a storehouse of images which are retained, like
+the image which the old Dane's eye held of the wolf's nose and teeth.
+And who knows? Perhaps it is possible to ask of a dead man's eye the
+secret of what it saw when living."
+
+This was, put in more scientific terms by the young Danish doctor, the
+substance of what Bernardet believed possible. The young men had
+listened with the attractive sympathy, which is displayed when anything
+novel is explained. Rigid, upon the marble slab, the victim seemed to
+wait for the result of the discussion, deaf to all the confused sounds
+about him; his eye fixed upon the infinite, upon the unknowable which he
+now knew.
+
+It was, however, this insensible body which had caused the discussion of
+what was an enigma to savants. What was the secret of his end? The last
+word of his agony? Who made that wound which had ended his life? And
+like a statue lying on its stone couch, the murdered man seemed to wait.
+What they knew not, he knew. What they wished to know, he still knew,
+perhaps! This doubt alone, rooted deep in M. Ginory's mind, was enough
+to urge him to have the experiment tried, and, excusing himself for his
+infatuation, he begged M. Morin to grant permission to try the
+experiment, which some of the doctors had thought would be successful.
+
+"We shall be relieved even if we do not succeed, and we can but add our
+defeat to the others."
+
+M. Morin's face still bore its sceptical smile. But after all, the
+Examining Magistrate was master of the situation, and since young Dr.
+Erwin brought the result of the Denmark experiment--a contribution new
+in these researches--to add weight to the matter, the Professor
+requested that he should not be asked to lend himself to an experiment
+which he declared in advance would be a perfectly useless one.
+
+There was a photographic apparatus at the Morgue as at the Prefecture,
+used for anthropometry. Bernardet, moreover, had his kodak in his hand.
+One could photograph the retina as soon as the membrane was separated
+from the eye by the autopsy, and when, like the wing of a butterfly, it
+had been fastened to a piece of cork. And while Bernardet was accustomed
+to all the horrors of crime, yet he felt his heart beat almost to
+suffocation during this operation. He noticed that M. Ginory became very
+pale, and that he bit his lips, casting occasional pitying glances
+toward the dead man. On the contrary, the young men bent over the body
+and studied it with the admiration and joy of treasure seekers digging
+in a mine. Each human fibre seemed to reveal to them some new truth.
+They were like jewelers before a casket full of gems, and what they
+studied, weighed, examined, was a human corpse. And when those eyes,
+living, terrible, accusing, were removed, leaving behind them two empty
+orbits, the Professor suddenly spoke with marvelous eloquence, flowing
+and picturesque, as if he were speaking of works of art. And it was, in
+truth, a work of art, this wonderful mechanism which he explained to his
+students, who listened eagerly to each word. It was a work of art, this
+eye, with its sclerotic, its transparent cornea, its aqueous and
+vitreous humor, its crystalline lens, and the retina, like a
+photographic plate in that black chamber in which the luminous rays
+reflect, reversed, the objects seen. And M. Morin, holding between his
+fingers the object which he was demonstrating, spoke of the membrane
+formed of fibres and of the terminal elements of the optic nerve, as a
+professor of painting or of sculpture speaks of a gem chased by a
+Benvenuto.
+
+"The human body is a marvel," cried M. Morin, "a marvel, Messieurs," and
+he held forth for several minutes upon the wonderful construction of
+this marvel. His enthusiasm was shared, moreover, by the young men and
+Dr. Erwin, who listened intently. Bernardet, ignorant and respectful,
+felt troubled in the presence of this renowned physiologist, and
+congratulated himself that it was he who had insisted on this experiment
+and caused a member of the Institute to hold forth thus. As for M.
+Ginory, he left the room a moment, feeling the need of air. The
+operation, which the surgeons prolonged with joy, made him ill, and he
+felt very faint. He quickly recovered, however, and returned to the
+dissecting room, so as not to lose any of the explanation which M. Morin
+was giving as he stood with the eye in his hand. And in that eye an
+image remained, perhaps. He was anxious to search for it, to find it.
+
+"I will take it upon myself," Bernardet said.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+THE police officer did not follow the autopsical operations closely. He
+was eager to know--he was impatient for the moment when, having taken
+the picture, he might develop the negatives and study them to see if he
+could discover anything, could decipher any image. He had used
+photography in the service of anthropometry; he had taken the pictures
+at the Morgue with his kodak, and now, at home in his little room, which
+he was able to darken completely, he was developing his plates.
+
+Mme. Bernardet and the children were much struck with the expression of
+his face. It was not troubled, but preoccupied and as if he were
+completely absorbed. He was very quiet, eating very little, and seemed
+thoughtful. His wife asked him, "Art thou ill?" He responded, "No, I
+think not." And his little girls said to each other in low tones, "Papa
+is on a trail!"
+
+He was, in truth! The hunting dog smelled the scent! The pictures which
+he had taken of the retina and had developed showed a result
+sufficiently clear for Bernardet to feel confident enough to tell his
+chief that he distinctly saw a visage, the face of a man, confused, no
+doubt, but clear enough to recognize not only a type, but a distinct
+type. As from the depths of a cloud, in a sort of white halo, a human
+face appeared whose features could be distinctly seen with a magnifying
+glass! The face of a man with a pointed black beard, the forehead a
+little bald, and blackish spots which indicated the eyes. It was only a
+phantom, evidently, and the photographer at the Prefecture seemed more
+moved than Bernardet by the proofs obtained. Clearer than in spirit
+photographs, which so many credulous people believe in, the image showed
+plainly, and in studying it one could distinctly follow the contours. A
+spectre, perhaps, but the spectre of a man who was still young and
+resembled, with his pointed beard, some trooper of the sixteenth
+century, a phantom of some Seigneur Clouet.
+
+"For example," said the official photographer, "if one could discover a
+murderer by photographing a dead man's eyes, this would be miraculous.
+It is incredible!"
+
+"Not more incredible," Bernardet replied, "than what the papers publish:
+Edison is experimenting on making the blind see by using the Roentgen
+Rays. There is a miracle!"
+
+Then Bernardet took his proofs to M. Ginory. The police officer felt
+that the magistrate, the sovereign power in criminal researches, ought,
+above everything, to collaborate with him, to consent to these
+experiments which so many others had declared useless and absurd. The
+taste for researches, which was with M. Ginory a matter of temperament
+as well as a duty to his profession, was, fortunately, keen on this
+scent. Criminals call in their argot, the judges, "the pryers."
+Curiosity in this man was combined with a knowledge of profound
+researches.
+
+When Bernardet spread out on M. Ginory's desk the four photographs which
+he had brought with him, the first remark which the examining Magistrate
+made was: "But I see nothing--a cloud, a mist, and then after?"
+Bernardet drew a magnifying glass from his pocket and pointed out as he
+would have explained an enigmatical design, the lineaments, moving his
+finger over the contour of the face which his nail outlined, that human
+face which he had seen and studied in his little room in the passage of
+the Elysee des Beaux-Arts. He made him see--after some moments of minute
+examination--he made him see that face. "It is true--there is an image
+there," exclaimed M. Ginory. He added: "Is it plain enough for me to see
+it so that I can from it imagine a living being? I see the form, divined
+it at first, saw it clearly defined afterward. At first it seemed very
+vague, but I find it sufficiently well defined so that I can see each
+feature, but without any special character. Oh!" continued M. Ginory,
+excitedly, rubbing his plump little hands, "if it was only possible, if
+it was only possible! What a marvel!"
+
+"It is possible, Monsieur le Juge! have faith," Bernardet replied.
+"I swear to you that it is possible." This enthusiasm gained over
+the Examining Magistrate. Bernardet had found a fellow-sympathizer
+in his fantastic ideas. M. Ginory was now--if only to try the
+experiment--resolved to direct the investigation on this plan. He was
+anxious to first show the proofs to those who would be apt to recognize
+in them a person whom they might have once seen in the flesh. "To
+Moniche first and then to his wife," said Bernardet.
+
+"Who is Moniche?"
+
+"The concierge in the Boulevard de Clichy."
+
+Ordered to come to the court, M. and Mme. Moniche were overjoyed. They
+were summoned to appear before the Judges. They had become important
+personages. Perhaps their pictures would be published in the papers.
+They dressed themselves as for a fete. Mme. Moniche in her Sunday best
+strove to do honor to M. Rovere. She said to Moniche in all sincerity:
+"Our duty is to avenge him."
+
+While sitting on a bench in one of the long, cold corridors, the porter
+and his wife saw pass before them prisoners led by their jailers; some
+looked menacing, while others had a cringing air and seemed to try to
+escape notice. These two persons felt that they were playing roles as
+important as those in a melodrama at the Ambigu. The time seemed long
+to them, and M. Ginory did not call them as soon as they wished that he
+would. They thought of their home, which, while they were detained
+there, would be invaded by the curious, the gossips and reporters.
+
+"How slow these Judges are," growled Moniche.
+
+When he was conducted into the presence of M. Ginory and his registrar,
+and seated upon a chair, he was much confused and less bitter. He felt a
+vague terror of all the paraphernalia of justice which surrounded him.
+He felt that he was running some great danger, and to the Judge's
+questions he replied with extreme prudence. Thanks to him and his wife
+M. Ginory found out a great deal about M. Rovere's private life; he
+penetrated into that apparently hidden existence, he searched to see if
+he could discover, among the people who had visited the old ex-Consul
+the one among all others who might have committed the deed.
+
+"You never saw the woman who visited Rovere?"
+
+"Yes. The veiled lady. The Woman in Black. But I do not know her. No one
+knew her."
+
+The story told by the portress about the time when she surprised the
+stranger and Rovere with the papers in his hand in front of the open
+safe made quite an impression on the Examining Magistrate.
+
+"Do you know the name of the visitor?"
+
+"No, Monsieur," the portress replied.
+
+"But if you should see him again would you recognize him?"
+
+"Certainly! I see his face there, before me!"
+
+She made haste to return to her home so that she might relate her
+impressions to her fellow gossips. The worthy couple left the court
+puffed up with self-esteem because of the role which they had been
+called upon to play. The obsequies were to be held the next day, and the
+prospect of a dramatic day in which M. and Mme. Moniche would still play
+this important role, created in them an agony which was almost joyous.
+The crowd around the house of the crime was always large. Some few
+passers-by stopped--stopped before the stone facade behind which a
+murder had been committed. The reporters returned again and again for
+news, and the couple, greedy for glory, could not open a paper without
+seeing their names printed in large letters. One journal had that
+morning even published an especial article: "Interviews with M. and Mme.
+Moniche."
+
+The crowd buzzed about the lodge like a swarm of flies. M. Rovere's body
+had been brought back from the Morgue. The obsequies would naturally
+attract an enormous crowd; all the more, as the mystery was still as
+deep as ever. Among his papers had been found a receipt for a tomb in
+the cemetery at Montmartre, bought by him about a year before. In
+another paper, not dated, were found directions as to how his funeral
+was to be conducted. M. Rovere, after having passed a wandering life,
+wished to rest in his native country. But no other indications of his
+wishes, nothing about his relatives, had been found. It seemed as if he
+was a man without a family, without any place in society, or any claim
+on any one to bury him. And this distressing isolation added to the
+morbid curiosity which was attached to the house, now all draped in
+black, with the letter "R" standing out in white against its silver
+escutcheon.
+
+Who would be chief mourner? M. Rovere had appointed no one. He had asked
+in that paper that a short notice should be inserted in the paper giving
+the hour and date of the services, and giving him the simple title
+ex-Consul. "I hope," went on the writer, "to be taken to the cemetery
+quietly and followed by intimate friends, if any remain."
+
+Intimate friends were scarce in that crowd, without doubt, but the dead
+man's wish could hardly be carried out. Those obsequies which he had
+wished to be quiet became a sort of fete, funereal and noisy; where the
+thousands of people crowding the Boulevard crushed each other in their
+desire to see, and pressed almost upon the draped funeral car which the
+neighbors had covered with flowers.
+
+Everything is a spectacle for Parisians. The guardians of the peace
+strove to keep back the crowds; some gamins climbed into the branches of
+the trees. The bier had been placed at the foot of the staircase in the
+narrow corridor opening upon the street. Mme. Moniche had placed upon a
+table in the lodge some loose leaves, where Rovere's unknown friends
+could write their names.
+
+Bernardet, alert, with his eyes wide open, studying the faces, searching
+the eyes, mingled with the crowd, looked at the file of people,
+scrutinized, one by one, the signatures; Bernardet, in mourning, wearing
+black gloves, seemed more like an undertaker's assistant than a police
+spy. Once he found himself directly in front of the open door of the
+lodge and the table where the leaves lay covered with signatures; when
+in the half light of the corridor draped with black, where the bier lay,
+he saw a man of about fifty, pale and very sad looking. He had arrived,
+in his turn in the line, at the table, where he signed his name. Mme.
+Moniche, clothed in black, with a white handkerchief in her hand,
+although she was not weeping, found herself side by side with Bernardet;
+in fact, their elbows touched. When the man reached the table, coming
+from the semi-darkness of the passage, and stepped into the light which
+fell full on him from the window, the portress involuntarily exclaimed,
+"Ah!" She was evidently much excited, and caught the police officer by
+the hand and said:
+
+"I am afraid!"
+
+She spoke in such a low tone that Bernardet divined rather than heard
+what she meant in that stifled cry. He looked at her from the corner of
+his eye. He saw that she was ghastly, and again she spoke in a low tone:
+"He! he whom I saw with M. Rovere before the open safe!"
+
+Bernardet gave the man one sweeping glance of the eye. He fairly pierced
+him through with his sharp look. The unknown, half bent over the table
+whereon lay the papers, showed a wide forehead, slightly bald, and a
+pointed beard, a little gray, which almost touched the white paper as he
+wrote his name.
+
+Suddenly the police officer experienced a strange sensation; it seemed
+to him that this face, the shape of the head, the pointed beard, he had
+recently seen somewhere, and that this human silhouette recalled to him
+an image which he had recently studied. The perception of a possibility
+of a proof gave him a shock. This man who was there made him think
+suddenly of that phantom discernible in the photographs taken of the
+retina of the murdered man's eye.
+
+"Who is that man?"
+
+Bernardet shivered with pleasurable excitement, and, insisting upon his
+own impression that this unknown strongly recalled the image obtained,
+and mentally he compared this living man, bending over the table,
+writing his name, with that spectre which had the air of a trooper which
+appeared in the photograph. The contour was the same, not only of the
+face, but the beard. This man reminded one of a Seigneur of the time of
+Henry III., and Bernardet found in that face something formidable. The
+man had signed his name. He raised his head, and his face, of a dull
+white, was turned full toward the police officer; their looks crossed,
+keen on Bernardet's side, veiled in the unknown. But before the fixity
+of the officer's gaze the strange man dropped his head for a moment;
+then, in his turn, he fixed a piercing, almost menacing, gaze on
+Bernardet. Then the latter slowly dropped his eyes and bowed; the
+unknown went out quickly and was lost in the crowd before the house.
+
+"It is he! it is he!" repeated the portress, who trembled as if she had
+seen a ghost.
+
+Scarcely had the unknown disappeared than the police officer took but
+two steps to reach the table, and bending over it in his turn, he read
+the name written by that man:
+
+"Jacques Dantin."
+
+The name awakened no remembrance in Bernardet's mind, and now it was a
+living problem that he had to solve.
+
+"Tell no one that you have seen that man," he hastily said to Mme.
+Moniche. "No one! Do you hear?" And he hurried out into the Boulevard,
+picking his way through the crowd and watching out to find that Jacques
+Dantin, whom he wished to follow.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+JACQUES DANTIN, moreover, was not difficult to find in the crowd. He
+stood near the funeral car; his air was very sad. Bernardet had a fine
+opportunity to examine him at his ease. He was an elegant looking man,
+slender, with a resolute air, and frowning eyebrows which gave his face
+a very energetic look. His head bared to the cold wind, he stood like a
+statue while the bearers placed the casket in the funeral car, and
+Bernardet noticed the shaking of the head--a distressed shaking. The
+longer the police officer looked at him, studied him, the stronger grew
+the resemblance to the image in the photograph. Bernardet would soon
+know who this Jacques Dantin was, and even at this moment he asked a
+question or two of some of the assistants.
+
+"Do you know who that gentleman is standing near the hearse?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Do you know what Jacques Dantin does? Was he one of M. Rovere's
+intimate friends?"
+
+"Jacques Dantin?"
+
+"Yes; see, there, with the pointed beard."
+
+"I do not know him."
+
+Bernardet thought that if he addressed the question to M. Dantin himself
+he might learn all he wished to know at once, and he approached him at
+the moment the procession started, and walked along with him almost to
+the cemetery, striving to enter into conversation with him. He spoke of
+the dead man, sadly lamenting M. Rovere's sad fate. But he found his
+neighbor very silent. Upon the sidewalk of the Boulevard the dense crowd
+stood in respectful silence and uncovered as the cortege passed, and the
+officer noticed that some loose petals from the flowers dropped upon the
+roadway.
+
+"There are a great many flowers," he remarked to his neighbor. "It is
+rather surprising, as M. Rovere seemed to have so few friends."
+
+"He has had many," the man brusquely remarked. His voice was hoarse, and
+quivered with emotion. Bernardet saw that he was strongly moved. Was it
+sorrow? Was it bitterness of spirit? Remorse, perhaps! The man did not
+seem, moreover, in a very softened mood. He walked along with his eyes
+upon the funeral car, his head uncovered in spite of the cold, and
+seemed to be in deep thought. The police officer studied him from a
+corner of his eye. His wrinkled face was intelligent, and bore an
+expression of weariness, but there was something hard about the set of
+the mouth and insolent in the turned-up end of his mustache.
+
+As they approached the cemetery at Montmartre--the journey was not a
+long one in which to make conversation--Bernardet ventured a decisive
+question: "Did you know M. Rovere very well?"
+
+The other replied: "Very well."
+
+"And whom do you think could have had any interest in this matter?" The
+question was brusque and cut like a knife. Jacques Dantin hesitated in
+his reply, looking keenly as they walked along at this little man with
+his smiling aspect, whose name he did not know and who had questioned
+him.
+
+"It is because I have a great interest in at once commencing my
+researches," said Bernardet, measuring his words in order to note the
+effect which they would produce on this unknown man. "I am a police
+detective."
+
+Oh! This time Bernardet saw Dantin shiver. There was no doubt of it;
+this close contact with a police officer troubled him, and he turned
+pale and a quick spasm passed over his face. His anxious eyes searched
+Bernardet's face, but, content with stealing an occasional glance of
+examination toward his neighbor, the little man walked along with eyes
+cast toward the ground. He studied Jacques Dantin in sudden, quick turns
+of the eye.
+
+The car advanced slowly, turned the corner of the Boulevard and passed
+into the narrow avenue which led to God's Acre. The arch of the iron
+bridge led to the Campo-Santo like a viaduct of living beings, over to
+the Land of Sleep, for it was packed with a curious crowd; it was a
+scene for a melodrama, the cortege and the funeral car covered with
+wreaths. Bernardet, still walking by Dantin's side, continued to
+question him. The agent noticed that these questions seemed to embarrass
+M. Rovere's pretended friend.
+
+"Is it a long time since M. Rovere and Jacques Dantin have known each
+other?"
+
+"We have been friends since childhood."
+
+"And did you see him often?"
+
+"No. Life had separated us."
+
+"Had you seen him recently? Mme. Moniche said that you had."
+
+"Who is Mme. Moniche?"
+
+"The concierge of the house, and a sort of housekeeper for M. Rovere."
+
+"Ah! Yes!" said Jacques Dantin, as if he had just remembered some
+forgotten sight. Bernardet, by instinct, read this man's thoughts; saw
+again with him also the tragic scene when the portress, suddenly
+entering M. Rovere's apartments, had seen him standing, face to face
+with Dantin, in front of the open safe, with a great quantity of papers
+spread out.
+
+"Do you believe that he had many enemies?" asked the police agent, with
+deliberate calculation.
+
+"No," Dantin sharply replied, without hesitation. Bernardet waited a
+moment, then in a firm voice he said: "M. Ginory will no doubt count a
+good deal on you in order to bring about the arrest of the assassin."
+
+"M. Ginory?"
+
+"The Examining Magistrate."
+
+"Then he will have to make haste with his investigation," Jacques Dantin
+replied. "I shall soon be obliged to leave Paris." This reply astonished
+Bernardet. This departure, of which the motive was probably a simple
+one, seemed to him strange under the tragic circumstances. M. Dantin,
+moreover, did not hesitate to give him, without his asking for it, his
+address, adding that he would hold himself in readiness from his return
+from the cemetery at the disposition of the Examining Magistrate.
+
+"The misfortune is that I can tell nothing, as I know nothing. I do not
+even suspect who could have any interest in killing that unfortunate
+man. A professional criminal, without doubt."
+
+"I do not believe so."
+
+The cortege had now reached one of the side avenues; a white fog
+enveloped everything, and the marble tombs shone ghostly through it. The
+spot chosen by M. Rovere himself was at the end of the Avenue de la
+Cloche. The car slowly rolled toward the open grave. Mme. Moniche,
+overcome with grief, staggered as she walked along, but her husband,
+the tailor, seemed to be equal to the occasion and his role. They both
+assumed different expressions behind their dead. And Paul Rodier walked
+along just in front of them, note book in hand. Bernardet promised
+himself to keep close watch of Dantin and see in what manner he carried
+himself at the tomb. A pressure of the crowd separated them for a
+moment, but the officer was perfectly satisfied. Standing on the other
+side of the grave, face to face with him, was Dantin; a row of the most
+curious had pushed in ahead of Bernardet, but in this way he could
+better see Dantin's face, and not miss the quiver of a muscle. He stood
+on tiptoe and peered this way and that, between the heads, and could
+thus scrutinize and analyze, without being perceived himself.
+
+Dantin was standing on the very edge of the grave. He held himself very
+upright, in a tense, almost aggressive way, and looked, from time to
+time, into the grave with an expression of anger and almost defiance. Of
+what was he thinking? In that attitude, which seemed to be a revolt
+against the destiny which had come to his friend, Bernardet read a kind
+of hardening of the will against an emotion which might become excessive
+and telltale. He was not, as yet, persuaded of the guiltiness of this
+man, but he did not find in that expression of defiance the tenderness
+which ought to be shown for a friend--a lifelong friend, as Dantin had
+said that Rovere was. And then the more he examined him--there, for
+example, seeing his dark silhouette clearly defined in front of the
+dense white of a neighboring column--the more the aspect of this man
+corresponded with that of the vision transfixed in the dead man's eye.
+Yes, it was the same profile of a trooper, his hand upon his hip, as if
+resting upon a rapier. Bernardet blinked his eyes in order to better see
+that man. He perceived a man who strongly recalled the vague form found
+in that retina, and his conviction came to the aid of his instinct,
+gradually increased, and became, little by little, invincible,
+irresistible. He repeated the address which this man had given him:
+"Jacques Dantin, Rue de Richelieu, 114." He would make haste to give
+that name to M. Ginory, and have a citation served upon him. Why should
+this Dantin leave Paris? What was his manner of living? his means of
+existence? What were the passions, the vices, of the man standing there
+with the austere mien of a Huguenot, in front of the open grave?
+
+Bernardet saw that, despite his strong will and his wish to stand there
+impassive, Jacques Dantin was troubled when, with a heavy sound, the
+casket glided over the cords down into the grave. He bit the ends of his
+mustache and his gloved hand made several irresistible, nervous
+movements. And the look cast into that grave! The look cast at that
+casket lying in the bottom of that grave! On that casket was a plate
+bearing the inscription: "Louis Pierre Rovere." That mute look, rapid
+and grief-stricken, was cast upon that open casket, which contained the
+body--the gash across its throat, dissected, mutilated; the face with
+those dreadful eyes, which had been taken from their orbits, and, after
+delivering up their secret, replaced!
+
+They now defiled past the grave, and Dantin, the first, with a hand
+which trembled, sprinkled upon the casket those drops of water which are
+for our dead the last tears. Ah! but he was pale, almost livid; and how
+he trembled--this man with a stern face! Bernardet noticed the slightest
+trace of emotion. He approached in his turn and took the holy water
+sprinkler; then, as he turned away, desirous of catching up with M.
+Dantin, he heard his name called, and, turning, saw Paul Rodier, whose
+face was all smiles.
+
+"Well! Monsieur Bernardet, what new?" he asked. The tall young man had a
+charming air.
+
+"Nothing new," said the agent.
+
+"You know that this murder has aroused a great deal of interest?"
+
+"I do not doubt it."
+
+"Leon Luzarche is enchanted. Yes, Luzarche, the novelist. He had begun a
+novel, of which the first instalment was published in the same paper
+which brought out the first news of 'The Crime of the Boulevard de
+Clichy,' and as the paper has sold, sold, sold, he thinks that it is his
+story which has caused the immense and increased sales. No one is
+reading 'l'Ange-Gnome,' but the murder. All novelists ought to try to
+have a fine assassination published at the same time as their serials,
+so as to increase the sales of the paper. What a fine collaboration,
+Monsieur! Pleasantry, Monsieur! Have you any unpublished facts?"
+
+"No."
+
+"Not one? Not a trace?"
+
+"Nothing," Bernardet replied.
+
+"Oh, well! I--I have some, Monsieur--but it will surprise you. Read my
+paper! Make the papers sell."
+
+"But"--began the officer.
+
+"See here! Professional secret! Only, have you thought of the woman in
+black who came occasionally to see the ex-Consul?"
+
+"Certainly."
+
+"Well, she must be made to come back--that woman in black. It is not an
+easy thing to do. But I believe that I have ferreted her out. Yes, in
+one of the provinces."
+
+"Where?"
+
+"Professional secret," repeated the reporter, laughing.
+
+"And if M. Ginory asks for your professional secret?"
+
+"I will answer him as I answer you. Read my paper! Read _Lutece_!"
+
+"But the Judge, to him"----
+
+"Professional secret," said Paul Rodier for the third time. "But what a
+romance it would make! The Woman in Black!"
+
+While listening, Bernardet had not lost sight of M. Dantin, who, in the
+centre of one of the avenues, stood looking at the slowly moving crowd
+of curiosity seekers. He seemed to be vainly searching for a familiar
+face. He looked haggard. Whether it was grief or remorse, he certainly
+showed violent emotion. The police officer divined that a sharp struggle
+was taking place within that man's heart, and the sadness was great with
+which he watched that crowd in order to discover some familiar face, but
+he beheld only those of the curious. What Bernardet considered of the
+greatest importance was not to lose sight of this person of whose
+existence he was ignorant an hour before; and who, to him, was the
+perpetrator of the deed or an accomplice. He followed Dantin at a
+distance, who, from the cemetery at Montmartre went on foot directly to
+the Rue de Richelieu, and stopped at the number he had given, 114.
+
+Bernardet allowed some minutes to pass after the man on whose track he
+was had entered. Then he asked the concierge if M. Jacques Dantin was
+at home. He questioned him closely and became convinced that M.
+Rovere's friend had really lived there two years and had no profession.
+
+"Then," said the police agent, "it is not this Dantin for whom I am
+looking. He is a banker." He excused himself, went out, hailed a fiacre,
+and gave the order: "To the Prefecture."
+
+His report to the Chief, M. Morel, was soon made. He listened to him
+with attention, for he had absolute confidence in the police officer.
+"Never any _gaff_ with Bernardet," M. Morel was wont to say. He, like
+Bernardet, soon felt convinced that this man was probably the murderer
+of the ex-Consul.
+
+"As to the motive which led to the crime, we shall know it later."
+
+He wished, above everything else, to have strict inquiries made into
+Dantin's past life, in regard to his present existence; and the
+inquiries would be compared with his answers to the questions which M.
+Ginory would ask him when he had been cited as a witness.
+
+"Go at once to M. Ginory's room, Bernardet," said the Chief. "During
+this time I would learn a little about what kind of a man this is."
+
+Bernardet had only to cross some corridors and mount a few steps to
+reach the gallery upon which M. Ginory's room opened. While waiting to
+be admitted he passed up and down; seated on benches were a number of
+malefactors, some of whom knew him well, who were waiting examination.
+He was accustomed to see this sight daily, and without being moved, but
+this time he was overcome by a sort of agony, a spasm which contracted
+even his fingers and left his nerves in as quivering a state as does
+insomnia. Truly, in the present case he was much more concerned than in
+an ordinary manhunt. The officer experienced the fear which an inventor
+feels before the perfection of a new discovery. He had undertaken a
+formidable problem, apparently insoluble, and he desired to solve it.
+Once or twice he took out from the pocket of his redingote an old worn
+case and looked at the proofs of the retina which he had pasted on a
+card. There could be no doubt. This figure, a little confused, had the
+very look of the man who had bent over the grave. M. Ginory would be
+struck by it when he had Jacques Dantin before him. Provided the
+Examining Magistrate still had the desire which Bernardet had incited in
+him, to push the matter to the end. Fortunately M. Ginory was very
+curious. With this curiosity anything might happen. The time seemed
+long. What if this Dantin, who spoke of leaving Paris, should disappear,
+should escape the examination? What miserable little affair occupied M.
+Ginory? Would he ever be at liberty?
+
+The door opened, a man in a blouse was led out; the registrar appeared
+on the threshold and Bernardet asked if he could not see M. Ginory
+immediately, as he had an important communication to make to him.
+
+"I will not detain him long," he said.
+
+Far from appearing annoyed, the Magistrate seemed delighted to see the
+officer. He related to him all he knew, how he had seen the man at M.
+Rovere's funeral. That Mme. Moniche had recognized him as the one whom
+she had surprised standing with M. Rovere before the open safe. That he
+had signed his name and took first rank in the funeral cortege, less by
+reason of an old friendship which dated from childhood than by that
+strange and impulsive sentiment which compels the guilty man to haunt
+the scene of his crime, to remain near his victim, as if the murder, the
+blood, the corpse, held for him a morbid fascination.
+
+"I shall soon know," said M. Ginory. He dictated to the registrar a
+citation to appear before him, rang the bell and gave the order to serve
+the notice on M. Dantin at the given address and to bring him to the
+Palais.
+
+"Do not lose sight of him," he said to Bernardet, and began some other
+examinations. Bernardet bowed and his eyes shone like those of a sleuth
+hound on the scent of his prey.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X.
+
+
+BETWEEN the examining Magistrate, who questioned, and the man cited to
+appear before him, who replied, it was a duel; a close game, rapid and
+tragic, in which each feint might make a mortal wound; in which each
+parry and thrust might be decisive. No one in the world has the power of
+the man who, in a word, can change to a prisoner the one who enters the
+Palais as a passer-by. Behind this inquisitor of the law the prison
+stands; the tribunal in its red robes appears; the beams of the scaffold
+cast their sinister shadows, and the magistrate's cold chamber already
+seems to have the lugubrious humidity of the dungeons where the
+condemned await their fate.
+
+Jacques Dantin arrived at the Palais in answer to the Magistrate's
+citation, with the apparent alacrity of a man who, regretting a friend
+tragically put out of the world, wishes to aid in avenging him. He did
+not hesitate a second, and Bernardet, who saw him enter the carriage,
+was struck with the seeming eagerness and haste with which he responded
+to the Magistrate's order. When M. Ginory was informed that Jacques
+Dantin had arrived, he allowed an involuntary "Ah!" to escape him. This
+ah! seemed to express the satisfaction of an impatient spectator when
+the signal is given which announces that the curtain is about to be
+raised. For the Examining Magistrate, the drama in which he was about to
+unravel the mystery was to begin. He kept his eyes fixed upon the door,
+attributing, correctly, a great importance to the first impression the
+comer would make upon him as he entered the room. M. Ginory found that
+he was much excited; this was to him a novel thing; but by exercising
+his strong will he succeeded in mastering the emotion, and his face and
+manner showed no trace of it.
+
+In the open door M. Jacques Dantin appeared. The first view, for the
+Magistrate, was favorable. The man was tall, well built; he bowed with
+grace and looked straight before him. But at the same time M. Ginory was
+struck by the strange resemblance of this haughty face to that image
+obtained by means of Bernardet's kodak. It seemed to him that this image
+had the same stature, the same form as that man surrounded by the hazy
+clouds. Upon a second examination it seemed to the Magistrate that the
+face betrayed a restrained violence, a latent brutality. The eyes were
+stern, under their bristling brows; the pointed beard, quite thin on the
+cheeks, showed the heavy jaws, and under the gray mustache the under lip
+protruded like those of certain Spanish cavaliers painted by Velasquez.
+
+"Prognathous," thought M. Ginory, as he noticed this characteristic.
+With a gesture he motioned M. Dantin to a chair. The man was there
+before the Judge who, with crossed hands, his elbows leaning on his
+papers, seemed ready to talk of insignificant things, while the
+registrar's bald head was bent over his black table as he rapidly took
+notes. The interview took on a grave tone, but as between two men who,
+meeting in a salon, speak of the morning or of the premiere of the
+evening before, and M. Ginory asked M. Dantin for some information in
+regard to M. Rovere.
+
+"Did you know him intimately?"
+
+"Yes, M. le Juge."
+
+"For how many years?"
+
+"For more than forty. We were comrades at a school in Bordeaux."
+
+"You are a Bordelais?"
+
+"Like Rovere, yes," Dantin replied.
+
+"Of late, have you seen M. Rovere frequently?"
+
+"I beg your pardon, M. le Juge, but what do you mean by of late?"
+
+M. Ginory believed that he had discovered in this question put by a man
+who was himself being interrogated--a tactic--a means of finding before
+replying, time for reflection. He was accustomed to these manoeuvres
+of the accused.
+
+"When I say of late," he replied, "I mean during the past few weeks or
+days which preceded the murder--if that suits you."
+
+"I saw him often, in fact, even oftener than formerly."
+
+"Why?"
+
+Jacques Dantin seemed to hesitate. "I do not know--chance. In Paris one
+has intimate friends, one does not see them for some months; and
+suddenly one sees them again, and one meets them more frequently."
+
+"Have you ever had any reason for the interruptions in your relations
+with M. Rovere when you ceased to see him, as you say?"
+
+"None whatever."
+
+"Was there between you any sort of rivalry, any motive for coldness?"
+
+"Any motive--any rivalry. What do you mean?"
+
+"I do not know," said the great man; "I ask you. I am questioning you."
+
+The registrar's pen ran rapidly and noiselessly over the paper, with the
+speed of a bird on the wing.
+
+These words, "I am questioning you," seemed to make an unexpected,
+disagreeable impression on Dantin, and he frowned.
+
+"When did you visit Rovere the last time?"
+
+"The last time?"
+
+"Yes. Strive to remember."
+
+"Two or three days before the murder."
+
+"It was not two or three days; it was two days exactly before the
+assassination."
+
+"You are right, I beg your pardon."
+
+The Examining Magistrate waited a moment, looking the man full in the
+eyes. It seemed to him that a slight flush passed over his hitherto pale
+face.
+
+"Do you suspect anyone as the murderer of Rovere?" asked M. Ginory after
+a moment's reflection.
+
+"No one," said Dantin. "I have tried to think of some one."
+
+"Had Rovere any enemies?"
+
+"I do not know of any."
+
+The Magistrate swung around by a detour habitual with him to Jacques
+Dantin's last visit to the murdered man, and begged him to be precise,
+and asked him if anything had especially struck him during that last
+interview with his friend.
+
+"The idea of suicide having been immediately dropped on the simple
+examination of the wound, no doubt exists as to the cause of death.
+Rovere was assassinated. By whom? In your last interview was there any
+talk between you of any uneasiness which he felt in regard to anything?
+Was he occupied with any especial affair? Had he--sometimes one has
+presentiments--any presentiment of an impending evil, that he was
+running any danger?"
+
+"No," Dantin replied. "Rovere made no allusion to me of any peril which
+he feared. I have asked myself who could have any interest in his death.
+One might have done the deed for plunder."
+
+"That seems very probable to me," said the Magistrate, "but the
+examination made in the apartment proves that not a thing had been
+touched. Theft was not the motive."
+
+"Then?" asked Dantin.
+
+The sanguine face of the Magistrate, that robust visage, with its
+massive jaws, lighted up with a sort of ironical expression.
+
+"Then we are here to search for the truth and to find it." In this
+response, made in a mocking tone, the registrar, who knew every varying
+shade of tone in his Chief's voice, raised his head, for in this tone he
+detected a menace.
+
+"Will you tell me all that passed in that last interview?"
+
+"Nothing whatever which could in any way put justice on the track of the
+criminal."
+
+"But yet can you, or, rather, I should say, ought you not to relate to
+me all that was said or done? The slightest circumstance might enlighten
+us."
+
+"Rovere spoke to me of private affairs," Dantin replied, but quickly
+added: "They were insignificant things."
+
+"What are insignificant things?"
+
+"Remembrances--family matters."
+
+"Family things are not insignificant, above all in a case like this. Had
+Rovere any family? No relative assisted at the obsequies."
+
+Jacques Dantin seemed troubled, unnerved rather, and this time it was
+plainly visible. He replied in a short tone, which was almost brusque:
+
+"He talked of the past."
+
+"What past?" asked the Judge, quickly.
+
+"Of his youth--of moral debts."
+
+M. Ginory turned around in his chair, leaned back, and said in a caustic
+tone: "Truly, Monsieur, you certainly ought to complete your information
+and not make an enigma of your deposition. I do not understand this
+useless reticence, and moral debts, to use your words; they are only to
+gain time. What, then, was M. Rovere's past?"
+
+Dantin hesitated a moment; not very long. Then he firmly said: "That,
+Monsieur le Juge, is a secret confided to me by my friend, and as it has
+nothing to do with this matter, I ask you to refrain from questioning me
+about it."
+
+"I beg your pardon," the magistrate replied. "There is not, there cannot
+be a secret for an Examining Magistrate. In Rovere's interests, whose
+memory ought to have public vindication, yes, in his interests, and I
+ought to say also in your own, it is necessary that you should state
+explicitly what you have just alluded to. You tell me that there is a
+secret. I wish to know it."
+
+"It is the confidence of a dead person, Monsieur," Dantin replied, in
+vibrating tones.
+
+"There are no confidences when justice is in the balance."
+
+"But it is also the secret of a living person," said Jacques Dantin.
+
+"Is it of yourself of whom you speak?"
+
+He gazed keenly at the face, now tortured and contracted.
+
+Dantin replied: "No, I do not speak of myself, but of another."
+
+"That other--who is he?"
+
+"It is impossible to tell you."
+
+"Impossible?"
+
+"Absolutely impossible!"
+
+"I will repeat to you my first question--'Why?'"
+
+"Because I have sworn on my honor to reveal it to no one."
+
+"Ah, ah!" said Ginory, mockingly; "it was a vow? That is perfect!"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le Juge; it was a vow."
+
+"A vow made to whom?"
+
+"To Rovere."
+
+"Who is no longer here to release you from it. I understand."
+
+"And," asked Dantin, with a vehemence which made the registrar's thin
+hand tremble as it flew over the paper, "what do you understand?"
+
+"Pardon," said M. Ginory; "you are not here to put questions, but to
+answer those which are asked you. It is certain that a vow which binds
+the holder of a secret is a means of defence, but the accused have, by
+making common use of it, rendered it useless."
+
+The Magistrate noticed the almost menacing frown with which Dantin
+looked at him at the words, "the accused."
+
+"The accused?" said the man, turning in his chair. "Am I one of the
+accused?" His voice was strident, almost strangled.
+
+"I do not know that," said M. Ginory, in a very calm tone; "I say that
+you wish to keep your secret, and it is a claim which I do not admit."
+
+"I repeat, Monsieur le Juge, that the secret is not mine."
+
+"It is no longer a secret which can remain sacred here. A murder has
+been committed, a murderer is to be found, and everything you know you
+ought to reveal to justice."
+
+"But if I give you my word of honor that it has not the slightest
+bearing on the matter--with the death of Rovere?"
+
+"I shall tell my registrar to write your very words in reply--he has
+done it--I shall continue to question you, precisely because you speak
+to me of a secret which has been confided to you and which you refuse to
+disclose to me. Because you do refuse?"
+
+"Absolutely!"
+
+"In spite of what I have said to you? It is a warning; you know it
+well!"
+
+"In spite of your warning!"
+
+"Take care!" M. Ginory softly said. His angry face had lost its wonted
+amiability. The registrar quickly raised his head. He felt that a
+decisive moment had come. The Examining Magistrate looked directly into
+Dantin's eyes and slowly said: "You remember that you were seen by the
+portress at the moment when Rovere, standing with you in front of his
+open safe, showed you some valuables?"
+
+Dantin waited a moment before he replied, as if measuring these words,
+and searching to find out just what M. Ginory was driving at. This
+silence, short and momentous, was dramatic. The Magistrate knew it
+well--that moment of agony when the question seems like a cord, like a
+lasso suddenly thrown, and tightening around one's neck. There was
+always, in his examination, a tragic moment.
+
+"I remember very well that I saw a person whom I did not know enter the
+room where I was with M. Rovere," Jacques Dantin replied at last.
+
+"A person whom you did not know? You knew her very well, since you had
+more than once asked her if M. Rovere was at home. That person is Mme.
+Moniche, who has made her deposition."
+
+"And what did she say in her deposition?"
+
+The Magistrate took a paper from the table in front of him and read:
+"When I entered, M. Rovere was standing before his safe, and I noticed
+that the individual of whom I spoke (the individual is you) cast upon
+the coupons a look which made me cold. I thought to myself: 'This man
+looks as if he is meditating some bad deed.'"
+
+"That is to say," brusquely said Dantin, who had listened with frowning
+brows and with an angry expression, "that Mme. Moniche accuses me of
+having murdered M. Rovere!"
+
+"You are in too much haste. Mme. Moniche has not said that precisely.
+She was only surprised--surprised and frightened--at your expression as
+you looked at the deeds, bills and coupons."
+
+"Those coupons," asked Dantin rather anxiously, "have they, then, been
+stolen?"
+
+"Ah, that we know nothing about," and the Magistrate smiled.
+
+"One has found in Rovere's safe in the neighborhood of 460,000 francs in
+coupons, city of Paris bonds, shares in mining societies, rent rolls;
+but nothing to prove that there was before the assassination more than
+that sum."
+
+"Had it been forced open?"
+
+"No; but anyone familiar with the dead man, a friend who knew the secret
+of the combination of the safe, the four letters forming the word, could
+have opened it without trouble."
+
+Among these words Dantin heard one which struck him full in the
+face--"friend." M. Ginory had pronounced it in an ordinary tone, but
+Dantin had seized and read in it a menace. For a moment the man who was
+being questioned felt a peculiar sensation. It seemed to him one day
+when he had been almost drowned during a boating party that same agony
+had seized him; it seemed that he had fallen into some abyss, some icy
+pool, which was paralyzing him. Opposite to him the Examining Magistrate
+experienced a contrary feeling. The caster of a hook and line feels a
+similar sensation; but it was intensified a hundred times in the
+Magistrate, a fisher of truth, throwing the line into a human sea, the
+water polluted, red with blood and mixed with mud.
+
+A friend! A friend could have abused the dead man's secret and opened
+that safe! And that friend--what name did he bear? Whom did M. Ginory
+wish to designate? Dantin, in spite of his _sang froid_, experienced a
+violent temptation to ask the man what he meant by those words. But the
+strange sensation which this interview caused him increased. It seemed
+to him that he had been there a long time--a very long time since he
+had crossed that threshold--and that this little room, separated from
+the world like a monk's cell, had walls thick enough to prevent any one
+from hearing anything outside. He felt as if hypnotized by that man, who
+at first had met him with a pleasant air, and who now bent upon him
+those hard eyes. Something doubtful, like vague danger, surrounded him,
+menaced him, and he mechanically followed the gesture which M. Ginory
+made as he touched the ivory button of an electric bell, as if on this
+gesture depended some event of his life. A guard entered. M. Ginory said
+to him in a short tone: "Have the notes been brought?"
+
+"M. Bernardet has just brought them to me, Monsieur le Juge."
+
+"Give them to me!" He then added: "Is Monsieur Bernardet here?"
+
+"Yes, Monsieur le Juge."
+
+"Very well."
+
+Jacques Dantin remembered the little man with whom he had talked in the
+journey from the house of death to the tomb, where he had heard some one
+call "Bernardet." He did not know at the time, but the name had struck
+him. Why did his presence seem of so much importance to this Examining
+Magistrate? And he looked, in his turn, at M. Ginory, who, a little
+near-sighted, was bending his head, with its sandy hair, its bald
+forehead, on which the veins stood out like cords, over his notes,
+which had been brought to him. Interesting notes--important, without
+doubt--for, visibly satisfied, M. Ginory allowed a word or two to escape
+him: "Good! Yes--Yes--Fine! Ah! Ah!--Very good!" Then suddenly Dantin
+saw Ginory raise his head and look at him--as the saying is--in the
+white of the eyes. He waited a moment before speaking, and suddenly put
+this question, thrust at Dantin like a knife-blow:
+
+"Are you a gambler, as I find?"
+
+The question made Jacques Dantin fairly bound from his chair. A gambler!
+Why did this man ask him if he was a gambler? What had his habits, his
+customs, his vices even, to do with this cause for which he had been
+cited, to do with Rovere's murder?
+
+"You are a gambler," continued the Examining Magistrate, casting from
+time to time a keen glance toward his notes. "One of the inspectors of
+gambling dens saw you lose at the Cercle des Publicistes 25,000 francs
+in one night."
+
+"It is possible; the only important point is that I paid them!" The
+response was short, crisp, showing a little irritation and stupefaction.
+
+"Assuredly," said the Judge. "But you have no fortune. You have recently
+borrowed a considerable sum from the usurers in order to pay for some
+losses at the Bourse."
+
+Dantin became very pale, his lips quivered, and his hands trembled.
+These signs of emotion did not escape the eyes of M. Ginory nor the
+registrar's.
+
+"Is it from your little notes that you have learned all that?" he
+demanded.
+
+"Certainly," M. Ginory replied. "We have been seeking for some hours for
+accurate information concerning you; started a sort of diary or rough
+draught of your biography. You are fond of pleasure. You are seen, in
+spite of your age--I pray you to pardon me, there is no malice in the
+remark: I am older than you--everywhere where is found the famous
+Tout-Paris which amuses itself. The easy life is the most difficult for
+those who have no fortune. And, according to these notes--I refer to
+them again--of fortune you have none."
+
+"That is to say," interrupted Dantin, brusquely, "it would be very
+possible that, in order to obtain money for my needs, in order to steal
+the funds in his iron safe, I would assassinate my friend?"
+
+M. Ginory did not allow himself to display any emotion at the insolent
+tone of these words, which had burst forth, almost like a cry. He looked
+Dantin full in the face, and with his hands crossed upon his notes, he
+said:
+
+"Monsieur, in a matter of criminal investigation a Magistrate, eager for
+the truth ought to admit that anything is possible, even probable, but
+in this case I ought to recognize the fact that you have not helped me
+in my task. A witness finds you tete-a-tete with the victim and
+surprises your trouble at the moment when you are examining Rovere's
+papers. I ask what it was that happened between you, you reply that that
+is your secret, and for explanation you give me your word of honor that
+it had nothing whatever to do with the murder. You would yourself think
+that I was very foolish if I insisted any longer. True, there was no
+trace of any violence in the apartment, whatever subtraction may have
+been made from the safe. It appears that you are in a position to know
+the combination; it appears, also, that you are certainly in need of
+money; as clearly known as it is possible to learn in a hurried inquiry
+such as has been made, while you have been here. I question you. I let
+you know what you ought to know, and you fly into a passion. And note
+well! it is you yourself, in your anger and your violence, who speaks
+first the word of which I have not pronounced a syllable. It is you who
+have jumped straight to a logical conclusion of the suppositions which
+are still defective, without doubt, but are not the less suppositions;
+yes, it is you who say that with a little logic one can certainly accuse
+you of the murder of the one whom you called your friend."
+
+Each word brought to Dantin's face an angry or a frightened expression,
+and the more slowly M. Ginory spoke, the more measured his words,
+emphasizing his verbs, with a sort of professional habit, as a surgeon
+touches a wound with a steel instrument, the questioned man, put through
+a sharp cross-examination, experienced a frightful anger, a strong
+internal struggle, which made the blood rush to his ears and ferocious
+lightnings dart through his eyes.
+
+"It is easy, moreover," continued M. Ginory, in a paternal tone, "for
+you to reduce to nothingness all these suppositions, and the smallest
+expression in regard to the role which you played in your last interview
+with Rovere would put everything right."
+
+"Ah! must we go back to that?"
+
+"Certainly, we must go back to that! The whole question lies there! You
+come to an Examining Magistrate and tell him that there is a secret; you
+speak of a third person, of recollections of youth, of moral debts--and
+you are astonished that the Judge strives to wrest the truth from you?"
+
+"I have told it."
+
+"The whole truth?"
+
+"It has nothing to do with Rovere's murder, and it would injure some one
+who knows nothing about it. I have told you so. I repeat it."
+
+"Yes," said M. Ginory, "you hold to your enigma! Oh, well, I, the
+Magistrate, demand that you reveal the truth to me. I command you to
+tell it."
+
+The registrar's pen ran over the paper and trembled as if it scented a
+storm. The psychological moment approached. The registrar knew it
+well--that moment--and the word which the Magistrate would soon
+pronounce would be decisive.
+
+A sort of struggle began in Dantin's mind--one saw his face grow
+haggard, his eyes change their expression. He looked at the papers upon
+which M. Ginory laid his fat and hairy hands; those police notes _which
+gossiped_, as peasants say, in speaking of papers or writing which they
+cannot read and which denounce them. He asked himself what more would be
+disclosed by those notes of the police agents of the scandals of the
+club, of the neighbors, of the porters. He passed his hands over his
+forehead as if to wipe off the perspiration or to ease away a headache.
+
+"Come, now, it is not very difficult, and I have the right to know,"
+said M. Ginory. After a moment Jacques Dantin said in a strong voice: "I
+swear to you, Monsieur, that nothing Rovere said to me when I saw him
+the last time could assist justice in any whatsoever, and I beg of you
+not to question me further about it."
+
+"Will you answer?"
+
+"I cannot, Monsieur."
+
+"The more you hesitate the more reason you give me to think that the
+communication would be grave."
+
+"Very grave, but it has nothing to do with your investigation."
+
+"It's not for you to outline the duties of my limits or my rights. Once
+more, I order you to reply."
+
+"I cannot."
+
+"You will not."
+
+"I cannot," brusquely said the man run to earth, with accent of
+violence.
+
+The duel was finished.
+
+M. Ginory began to laugh, or, rather, there was a nervous contraction of
+his mouth, and his sanguine face wore a scoffing look, while a
+mechanical movement of his massive jaws made him resemble a bulldog
+about to bite.
+
+"Then," said he, "the situation is a very simple one and you force me to
+come to the end of my task. You understand?"
+
+"Perfectly," said Jacques Dantin, with the impulsive anger of a man who
+stumbles over an article which he has left there himself.
+
+"You still refuse to reply?"
+
+"I refuse. I came here as a witness. I have nothing to reproach myself
+with, especially as I have nothing to fear. You must do whatever you
+choose to do."
+
+"I can," said the Magistrate, "change a citation for appearance to a
+citation for retention. I will ask you once more"----
+
+"It is useless," interrupted Dantin. "An assassin. I! What folly!
+Rovere's murderer! It seems as if I were dreaming! It is absurd, absurd,
+absurd!"
+
+"Prove to me that it is absurd in truth. Do you not wish to reply?"
+
+"I have told you all I know."
+
+"But you have said nothing of what I have demanded of you."
+
+"It is not my secret."
+
+"Yes; there is your system. It is frequent, it is common. It is that of
+all the accused."
+
+"Am I already accused?" asked Dantin, ironically.
+
+M. Ginory was silent a moment, then, slowly taking from the drawer of
+his desk some paper upon which Dantin could discern no writing this
+time, but some figures, engraved in black--he knew not what they
+were--the Magistrate held them between his fingers so as to show them.
+He swung them to and fro, and the papers rustled like dry leaves. He
+seemed to attach great value to these papers, which the registrar looked
+at from a corner of his eye, guessing that they were the photographic
+proofs which had been taken.
+
+"I beg of you to examine these proofs," said the Magistrate to Dantin.
+He held them out to him, and Dantin spread them on the table (there
+were four of them), then he put on his eyeglasses in order to see
+better. "What is that?" he asked.
+
+"Look carefully," replied the Magistrate. Dantin bent over the proofs,
+examined them one by one, divined, rather than saw, in the picture which
+was a little hazy, the portrait of a man; and upon close examination
+began to see in the spectre a vague resemblance.
+
+"Do you not see that this picture bears a resemblance to you?"
+
+This time Dantin seemed the prey of some nightmare, and his eyes
+searched M. Ginory's face with a sort of agony. The expression struck
+Ginory. One would have said that a ghost had suddenly appeared to
+Dantin.
+
+"You say that it resembles me?"
+
+"Yes. Look carefully! At first the portrait is vague; on closer
+examination it comes out from the halo which surrounds it, and the
+person who appears there bears your air, your features, your
+characteristics"----
+
+"It is possible," said Dantin. "It seems to resemble me; it seems as if
+I were looking at myself in a pocket mirror. But what does that
+signify?"
+
+"That signifies--Oh! I am going to astonish you. That signifies"--M.
+Ginory turned toward his registrar: "You saw the other evening, Favarel,
+the experiment in which Dr. Oudin showed us the heart and lungs
+performing their functions in the thorax of a living man, made visible
+by the Roentgen Rays. Well! This is not any more miraculous. These
+photographs (he turned now toward Dantin) were taken of the retina of
+the dead man's eye. They are the reflection, the reproduction of the
+image implanted there, the picture of the last living being contemplated
+in the agony; the last visual sensation which the unfortunate man
+experienced. The retina has given to us--as a witness--the image of the
+living person seen by the dead man for the last time!"
+
+A deep silence fell upon the three men in that little room, where one of
+them alone, lost his foothold at this strange revelation. For the
+Magistrate it was a decisive moment; when all had been said, when the
+man having been questioned closely, jumps at the foregone conclusion. As
+for the registrar, however blase he may have become by these daily
+experiences, it was the decisive moment! the moment when, the line drawn
+from the water, the fish is landed, writhing on the hook!
+
+Jacques Dantin, with an instinctive movement, had rejected, pushed back
+on the table those photographs which burned his fingers like the cards
+in which some fortune teller has deciphered the signs of death.
+
+"Well?" asked M. Ginory.
+
+"Well!" repeated Dantin in a strangled tone, either not comprehending or
+comprehending too much, struggling as if under the oppression of a
+nightmare.
+
+"How do you explain how your face, your shadow if you prefer, was found
+reflected in Rovere's eyes, and that in his agony, this was probably
+what he saw; yes, saw bending over him?"
+
+Dantin cast a frightened glance around the room, and asked himself if he
+was not shut up in a maniac's cell; if the question was real; if the
+voice he heard was not the voice of a dream!
+
+"How can I explain? but I cannot explain, I do not understand, I do not
+know--it is madness, it is frightful, it is foolish!"
+
+"But yet," insisted M. Ginory, "this folly, as you call it, must have
+some explanation."
+
+"What do you wish to have me say? I do not understand. I repeat, I do
+not understand."
+
+"What if you do not, you cannot deny your presence in the house at the
+moment of Rovere's death"----
+
+"Why cannot I deny it?" Dantin interrupted.
+
+"Because the vision is there, hidden, hazy, in the retina; because this
+photograph, in which you recognized yourself, denounces, points out,
+your presence at the moment of the last agony."
+
+"I was not there! I swear that I was not there!" Dantin fervently
+declared.
+
+"Then, explain," said the Magistrate.
+
+Dantin remained silent a moment, as if frightened. Then he stammered: "I
+am dreaming!--I dreaming!" and M. Ginory replied in a calm tone:
+
+"Notice that I attribute no exaggerated importance to these proofs. It
+is not on them alone that I base the accusation. But they constitute a
+strange witness, very disquieting in its mute eloquence. They add to the
+doubt which your desire for silence has awakened. You tell me that you
+were not near Rovere when he died. These proofs, irrefutable as a fact,
+seem to prove at once the contrary. Then, the day Rovere was
+assassinated where were you?"
+
+"I do not know. At home, without doubt. I will have to think it over. At
+what hour was Rovere killed?"
+
+M. Ginory made a gesture of ignorance and in a tone of raillery said:
+"That! There are others who know it better than I." And Dantin,
+irritated, looked at him.
+
+"Yes," went on the Magistrate, with mocking politeness, "the surgeons
+who can tell the hour in which he was killed." He turned over his
+papers. "The assassination was about an hour before midday. In Paris, in
+broad daylight, at that hour, a murder was committed!"
+
+"At that hour," said Jacques Dantin, "I was just leaving home."
+
+"To go where?"
+
+"For a walk. I had a headache. I was going to walk in the Champs-Elysees
+to cure it."
+
+"And did you, in your walk, meet any one whom you knew?"
+
+"No one."
+
+"Did you go into some shop?"
+
+"I did not."
+
+"In short, you have no _alibi_?"
+
+The word made Dantin again tremble. He felt the meshes of the net
+closing around him.
+
+"An _alibi_! Ah that! Decidedly. Monsieur, you accuse me of
+assassinating my friend," he violently said.
+
+"I do not accuse; I ask a question." And M. Ginory in a dry tone which
+gradually became cutting and menacing said: "I question you, but I warn
+you that the interview has taken a bad turn. You do not answer; you
+pretend to keep secret I know not what information which concerns us.
+You are not yet exactly accused. But--but--but--you are going to be"----
+
+The Magistrate waited a moment as if to give the man time to reflect,
+and he held his pen suspended, after dipping it in the ink, as an
+auctioneer holds his ivory hammer before bringing it down to close a
+sale. "I am going to drop the pen," it seemed to say. Dantin, very
+angry, remained silent. His look of bravado seemed to say: "Do you
+dare? If you dare, do it!"
+
+"You refuse to speak?" asked Ginory for the last time.
+
+"I refuse."
+
+"You have willed it! Do you persist in giving no explanation; do you
+entrench yourself behind I know not what scruple or duty to honor; do
+you keep to your systematic silence? For the last time, do you still
+persist in this?"
+
+"I have nothing--nothing--nothing to tell you!" Dantin cried in a sort
+of rage.
+
+"Oh, well! Jacques Dantin," and the Magistrate's voice was grave and
+suddenly solemn. "You are from this moment arrested." The pen, uplifted
+till this instant, fell upon the paper. It was an order for arrest. The
+registrar looked at the man. Jacques Dantin did not move. His expression
+seemed vague, the fixed expression of a person who dreams with wide-open
+eyes. M. Ginory touched one of the electric buttons above his table and
+pointed Dantin out to the guards, whose shakos suddenly darkened the
+doorway. "Take away the prisoner," he said shortly and mechanically,
+and, overcome, without revolt, Jacques Dantin allowed himself to be led
+through the corridors of the Palais, saying nothing, comprehending
+nothing, stumbling occasionally, like an intoxicated man or a
+somnambulist.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+M. BERNARDET was triumphant. He went home to dinner in a jubilant mood.
+His three little girls, dressed alike, clasped him round the neck, all
+at the same time, while Mme. Bernardet, always fresh, smiling and gay,
+held up her face with its soft, round, rosy cheeks to him.
+
+"My little ones," said the officer, "I believe that I have done well,
+and that my chief will advance me or give me some acknowledgment. I will
+buy you some bracelets, my dears, if that happens. But it is not the
+idea of filthy lucre which has urged me on, and I believe that I have
+certainly made a great stride in judiciary instruction, all owing to my
+kodak. It would be too long an explanation and, perhaps, a perfectly
+useless one. Let us go to dinner. I am as hungry as a wolf."
+
+He ate, truly, with a good appetite, scarcely stopped to tell how the
+assassin was under lock and key. The man had been measured and had
+become a number in the collection, always increasing, of accused persons
+in the catalogue continued each day for the Museum of Crime.
+
+"Ah! He is not happy," said Bernardet between two spoonfuls of soup.
+"Not happy, not happy at all! Not happy, and astonished--protesting,
+moreover, his innocence, as they all do. It is customary."
+
+"But," sweetly asked good little Mme. Bernardet, "what if he is
+innocent?" And the three little girls, raising their heads, looked at
+their father, as if to repeat their mother's question. The eldest
+murmured: "Yes, what if mamma is right?"
+
+Bernardet shrugged his shoulders.
+
+"To hear them, if one listened to them, one would believe them all
+innocent, and the crimes would have to commit themselves. If this one is
+innocent I shall be astonished, as if I should see snow fall in Paris in
+June; he will have to prove that he is innocent. These things prove
+themselves. Give me some more soup, Melanie."
+
+As Mme. Bernardet turned a ladleful of hot soup into her husband's plate
+she softly asked: "Are there no innocent ones condemned? Do you never
+deceive yourself?" Bernardet did not stop eating. "I cannot say--no one
+is infallible, no one--the shrewdest deceive themselves; they are
+sometimes duped. But it is rare, very rare. As well to say that it does
+not happen--Lesurques, yes (and the three little girls opened wide their
+large blue eyes as at a play), the Lesurques of the Courier de Lyon, who
+has made you weep so many times at the theatre at Montmartre; one would
+like to revise his trial to reinstate him, but no one has been able to
+do it. I have studied his trial--by my faith, I swear, I would condemn
+him still--ah! what good soup!"
+
+"But this one to-day?" asked Mme. Bernardet; "art thou certain? What is
+his name?"
+
+"Dantin--Jacques Dantin. Oh! He is a gentleman. A very fine man,
+elegant, indeed. Some Bohemian of the upper class, who evidently needed
+money, and who--Rovere had some valuables in his safe. The occasion made
+the thief--and there it is."
+
+"Papa," interrupted the eldest of the three little girls, "canst thou
+take us to see the trial, when he shall be sworn?"
+
+"That depends! It is not easy! I will try--I will ask. If thou wilt work
+hard--Oh, dame!" said Bernardet, "that will be a drama!"
+
+"I will work hard."
+
+At dessert, after he had taken his coffee, he allowed his three little
+girls to dip lumps of sugar into his saucer. He threw himself into his
+easy chair; he gave a sigh of satisfaction, like a man whose daily,
+wearisome tasks are behind him, and who is catching a moment's repose.
+
+"Ah!" he said, opening a paper which his wife had placed on a table near
+him, together with a little glass of cordial sent to them by some
+cousins in Burgundy; "I am going to see what has happened and what those
+good journalists have invented about the affair in the Boulevard de
+Clichy. It is true, it is a steeplechase between the reporters and us.
+Sometimes they win the race in the mornings. At other times, when they
+know nothing--ah! Then they invent, they embroider their histories!"
+
+A petroleum lamp lighted the paper which Bernardet unfolded and began to
+read.
+
+"Let us see what _Lutece_ says."
+
+He suddenly remembered what Paul Rodier had said to him. "Read my
+journal!" This woman in black, found in the province, did she really
+exist? Had the novelist written a romance in order to follow the example
+of his friend? He looked over the paper to see if Paul Rodier had
+collaborated, as his friend had. Bernardet skipped over the headlines
+and glanced at the theatrical news. "Politics--they are all the same to
+me--Ministerial crisis--nothing new about that. That could as well be
+published in yesterday's paper as in to-day's! 'The Crime of the
+Boulevard de Clichy'--ah! Good! Very good! We shall see." And he began
+to read. Had Paul Rodier invented all the information to which he had
+treated the public? What was certain was that the police officer frowned
+and now gave strict attention to what he was reading, as if weighing the
+reporter's words.
+
+Rodier had republished the biography of the ex-Consul. M. Rovere had
+been mixed, in South America, in violent dramas. He was a romantic
+person, about whom more than one adventure in Buenos Ayres was known.
+The reporter had gained his information from an Argentine journal, the
+_Prensa_, established in Paris, and whose editor, in South America, had
+visited, intimately, the French Consul. The appearance of a woman in
+black, those visits made on fixed dates, as on anniversaries, revealed
+an intimacy, a relationship perhaps, of the murdered man with that
+unknown woman. The woman was young, elegant and did not live in Paris.
+Rodier had set himself to discover her retreat, her name; and perhaps,
+thanks to her, to unravel the mystery which still enveloped the murder.
+
+"_Heuh!_ That is not very precise information," thought the police
+officer. But it at least awoke Bernardet's curiosity and intelligence.
+It solved no problem, but it put one. M. de Sartines's famous "_search
+for the woman_" came naturally to Paul Rodier's pen. And he finished the
+article with some details about Jacques Dantin, the intimate, the only
+friend of Louis Pierre Rovere; and the reporter, when he had written
+this, was still ignorant that Dantin was under arrest.
+
+"To-morrow," said Bernardet to himself, "he will give us Dantin's
+biography. He tells me nothing new in his report. And yet"----He folded
+up the paper and laid it on the table, and while sipping his cordial he
+thought of that mysterious visitor--the woman in black--and told
+himself that truly the trail must be there. He would see Moniche and his
+wife again; he would question them; he would make a thorough search.
+
+"But what for? We have the guilty man. It is a hundred to one that the
+assassin is behind bars. The woman might be an accomplice."
+
+Then Bernardet, filled with passion for his profession, rather than
+vanity--this artist in a police sense; this lover of art for art's
+sake--rubbed his hands and silently applauded himself because he had
+insisted, and, as it were, compelled M. Ginory and the doctors to adopt
+his idea. He, the humble, unknown sub-officer, standing back and simply
+striving to do his duty, had influenced distinguished persons as
+powerful as magistrates and members of the Academy. They had obeyed his
+suggestion. The little Bernardet felt that he had done a glorious deed.
+He had experienced a strong conviction, which would not be denied. He
+had proved that what had been considered only a chimera was a reality.
+He had accomplished a seeming impossibility. He had evoked the dead
+man's secret even from the tomb.
+
+"And M. Ginory thinks that it will not help his candidature at the
+Academy? He will wear the green robe, and he will owe it to me. There
+are others who owe me something, too."
+
+With his faculty for believing in his dreams, of seeing his visions
+appear, realized and living--a faculty which, in such a man, seemed like
+the strange hallucination of a poet--Bernardet did not doubt for a
+moment the reality of this phantom which had appeared in the retina of
+the eye. It was nothing more, that eye removed by the surgeon's scalpel,
+than an avenging mirror. It accused, it overwhelmed! Jacques Dantin was
+found there in all the atrocity of his crime.
+
+"When I think, when I think that they did not wish to try the
+experiment. It is made now!" thought Bernardet.
+
+M. Ginory had strongly recommended that all that part of the examination
+should not be made public. Absolute silence was necessary. If the press
+could have obtained the slightest information, every detail of the
+experiment would have become public property, and the account would have
+been embellished and made as fantastic as possible. This would have been
+a deep mine for Edgar A. Poe, who would have worked that lode well and
+made the Parisians shudder. How the ink would have been mixed with
+Rovere's blood! It was well understood that if the suspected man would
+in the end confess his guilt, the result of the singular scientifically
+incredible experiment should be made known. But until then absolute
+silence. Every thing which had been said and done around the dissecting
+table at the Morgue, or in the Examining Magistrate's room, would
+remain a secret.
+
+But would Dantin confess?
+
+The next day after M. Ginory had put him under arrest Bernardet had gone
+to the Palais for news. He wished to consult his chief about the "Woman
+in Black," to ask him what he thought of the article which had been
+published in the paper by Paul Rodier. M. Leriche attached no great
+importance to it.
+
+"A reporter's information. Very vague. There is always a woman,
+_parbleu!_ in the life of every man. But did this one know Dantin? She
+seems to me simply an old, abandoned friend, and who came occasionally
+to ask aid of the old boy"----
+
+"The woman noticed by Moniche is young," said Bernardet.
+
+"Abandoned friends are often young," M. Leriche replied, visibly
+enchanted with his observation.
+
+As for Dantin, he still maintained his obstinate silence. He persisted
+in finding iniquitous an arrest for which there was no motive, and he
+kept the haughty, almost provoking attitude of those whom the Chief
+called the greatest culprits.
+
+"Murderers in redingotes believe that they have sprung from Jupiter's
+thigh, and will not admit that any one should be arrested except those
+who wear smocks and peaked hats. They believe in an aristocracy and its
+privileges, and threaten to have us removed--you know that very well,
+Bernardet. Then, as time passes, they become, in a measure, calm and
+meek as little lambs; then they whimper and confess. Dantin will do as
+all the others have done. For the moment he howls about his innocence,
+and will threaten us, you will see, with a summons from the Chamber.
+That is of no importance."
+
+The Chief then gave the officer some instructions. He need not trouble
+himself any more, just now, about the Dantin affair, but attend to
+another matter of less importance--a trivial affair. After the murder
+and his experiences at the Morgue this matter seemed a low one to
+Bernardet. But each duty has its antithesis. The police officer put into
+this petty affair of a theft the same zeal, the same sharp attention
+with which he had investigated the crime of the Boulevard de Clichy. It
+was his profession.
+
+Bernardet started out on his quest. It was near the Halles (markets)
+that he had to work this time. The suspected man was probably one of the
+rascals who prowl about day and night, living on adventures, and without
+any home; sleeping under the bridges, or in one of the hovels on the
+outskirts of the Rue de Venise, where vice, distress and crime
+flourished. Bernardet first questioned the owner of the stolen property,
+obtained all the information which he could about the suspected man,
+and, with his keen scent for a criminal aroused, he glanced at
+everything--men, things, objects that would have escaped a less
+practised eye. He was walking slowly along toward the Permanence,
+looking keenly at the passers-by, the articles in the shops, the various
+movements in the streets, to see if he could get a hint upon which to
+work.
+
+It was his habit to thus make use of his walks. In a promenade he had
+more than once met a client, past or future. The boys fled before his
+piercing eyes; before this fat, jolly little man with the mocking smile
+which showed under his red mustache. This fright which he inspired made
+him laugh inwardly. He knew that he was respected, that he was feared.
+Among all these passers-by who jostled him, without knowing that he was
+watching them, he was a power, an unknown but sovereign power. He walked
+along with short, quick steps and watchful eyes, very much preoccupied
+with this affair, thinking of the worthless person for whom he was
+seeking, but he stopped occasionally to look at the wares spread out in
+some bric-a-brac shop or in some book store window. This also was his
+habit and his method. He ran his eye over the illustrated papers lying
+in a row in front; over the Socialistic placards, the song books. He
+kept himself _au courant_ with everything which was thought, seen,
+proclaimed and sung.
+
+"When one governs," thought Bernardet, "one ought to have the habit of
+going afoot in the street. One can learn nothing from the depths of a
+coupe, driven by a coachman wearing a tri-colored cockade." He was going
+to the Prefecture, the Permanence, when in the Rue des Bons-Enfants he
+was instinctively attracted to a shop window where rusty old arms,
+tattered uniforms, worn shakos, garments without value, smoky pictures,
+yellowed engravings and chance ornaments, rare old copies of books, old
+romances, ancient books, with eaten bindings, a mass of dissimilar
+objects--lost keys, belt buckles, abolished medals, battered sous--were
+mixed together in an oblong space as in a sort of trough. On either side
+of this shop window hung some soiled uniforms, a Zouave's vest, an
+Academician's old habit, lugubrious with its embroideries of green, a
+soiled costume which had been worn by some Pierrot at the Carnival. It
+was, in all its sad irony, the vulgar "hand-me-down that!" which makes
+one think of that other Morgue where the clothing has been rejected by
+the living or abandoned by the dead.
+
+Bernardet was neither of a melancholy temperament nor a dreamer, and he
+did not give much time to the tearful side of the question, but he was
+possessed of a ravenous curiosity, and the sight, however frequent, of
+that shop window always attracted him. With, moreover, that sort of
+magnetism which the searchers, great or small, intuitively feel--a
+collector of knick-knacks, discoverers of unknown countries, book worms
+bent over the volumes at four sous apiece, or chemists crouched over a
+retort--Bernardet had been suddenly attracted by a portrait exposed as
+an object rarer than the others, in the midst of this detritus of
+abandoned luxury or of past military glory.
+
+Yes, among the tobacco boxes, the belt buckles, the Turkish poniards,
+watches with broken cases, commonplace Japanese ornaments, a painting,
+oval in form, lay there--a sort of large medallion without a frame, and
+at first sight, by a singular attraction, it drew and held the attention
+of the police officer.
+
+"Ah!" said Bernardet out loud, "but this is singular."
+
+He leaned forward until his nose touched the cold glass, and peered
+fixedly at the picture. This painting, as large as one's hand, was the
+portrait of a man, and Bernardet fully believed at the first look he
+recognized the person whom the painter had reproduced.
+
+As his shadow fell across the window Bernardet could not distinctly see
+the painting, for it was not directly in the front line of articles
+displayed, and he stepped to one side to see if he could get a better
+view. Assuredly, there could be no doubt, the oval painting was
+certainly the portrait of Jacques Dantin, now accused of a crime. There
+was the same high forehead, the pointed beard, of the same color; the
+black redingote, tightly buttoned up and edged at the neck with the
+narrow line of a white linen collar, giving, in resembling a doublet, to
+this painting, the air of a trooper, of a swordsman, of a Guisard (a
+partisan of the Duke of Guise), of the time of Clouet.
+
+Something of a connoisseur in painting, without doubt, in his quality of
+amateur photographer, much accustomed to criticise a portrait if it was
+not a perfect likeness, Bernardet found in this picture a startling
+resemblance to Jacques Dantin; it was the very man himself! He appeared
+there, his thin face standing out from its greenish-black sombre
+background; the poise of the head displayed the same vigor as in the
+original; the clear-cut features looked energetic, and the skin had the
+same pallor which was characteristic of Dantin's complexion. This head,
+admirably painted, displayed an astonishing lifelike intensity. It had
+been done by a master hand, no doubt of that. And although in this
+portrait Jacques Dantin looked somewhat younger--for instance, the hair
+and pointed beard showed no silvery streaks in them--the resemblance was
+so marvelous that Bernardet immediately exclaimed: "It is he!"
+
+And most certainly it was Jacques Dantin himself. The more the officer
+examined it, the more convinced he became that this was a portrait of
+the man whom he had accompanied to the cemetery and to prison. But how
+could this picture have come into this bric-a-brac shop, and of whom
+could the dealer have obtained it? A reply to this would probably not be
+very difficult to obtain, and the police officer pushed back the door
+and found himself in the presence of a very large woman, with a pale,
+puffy face, which was surrounded by a lace cap. Her huge body was
+enveloped in a knitted woollen shawl. She wore spectacles.
+
+Bernardet, without stopping to salute her, pointed out the portrait and
+asked to see it. When he held it in his hands he found the resemblance
+still more startling. It was certainly Jacques Dantin! The painting was
+signed "P. B., Bordeaux, 1871." It was oval in shape; the frame was
+gone; the edge was marked, scratched, marred, as if the frame had been
+roughly torn from the picture.
+
+"Have you had this portrait a long time?" he asked of the shop woman.
+
+"I put it in the window to-day for the first time," the huge woman
+answered. "Oh, it is a choice bit. It was painted by a wicked one."
+
+"Who brought it here?"
+
+"Some one who wished to sell it. A passer-by. If it would interest you
+to know his name"----
+
+"Yes, certainly, it would interest me to know it," Bernardet replied.
+
+The shop woman looked at Bernardet defiantly and asked this question:
+
+"Do you know the man whose portrait that is?"
+
+"No. I do not know him. But this resembles one of my relatives. It
+pleases me. How much is it?"
+
+"A hundred francs," said the big woman.
+
+Bernardet suppressed at the same time a sudden start and a smile.
+
+"A hundred francs! _Diable!_ how fast you go. It is worth sous rather
+than francs."
+
+"That!" cried the woman, very indignant. "That? But look at this
+material, this background. It is famous, I tell you--I took it to an
+expert. At the public sale it might, perhaps, bring a thousand francs.
+My idea is that it is the picture of some renowned person. An actor or a
+former Minister. In fact, some historic person."
+
+"But one must take one's chance," Bernardet replied in a jeering tone.
+"But one hundred francs is one hundred francs. Too much for me. Who sold
+you the painting?"
+
+The woman went around behind the counter and opened a drawer, from which
+she took a note book, in which she kept a daily record of her sales. She
+turned over the leaves.
+
+"November 12, a small oval painting bought"--She readjusted her
+spectacles as if to better decipher the name.
+
+"I did not write the name myself; the man wrote it himself." She spelled
+out:
+
+"Charles--Charles Breton--Rue de la Condamine, 16"----
+
+"Charles Breton," Bernardet repeated; "who is this Charles Breton? I
+would like to know if he painted this portrait, which seems like a
+family portrait and has come to sell it"----
+
+"You know," interrupted the woman, "that that often happens. It is
+business. One buys or one sells all in good time."
+
+"And this Breton; how old was he?"
+
+"Oh, young. About thirty years old. Very good looking. Dark, with a full
+beard."
+
+"Did anything about him especially strike you?"
+
+"Nothing!" The woman shortly replied; she had become tired of these
+questions and looked at the little man with a troubled glance.
+
+Bernardet readily understood; and assuming a paternal, a beaming air, he
+said with his sweet smile:
+
+"I will not _fence_ any more; I will tell you the truth. I am a Police
+Inspector, and I find that this portrait strangely resembles a man whom
+we have under lock and key. You understand that it is very important I
+should know all that is to be ascertained about this picture."
+
+"But I have told you all I know, Monsieur," said the shopkeeper.
+"Charles Breton, Rue de la Condamine, 16; that is the name and address.
+I paid 20 francs for it. There is the receipt--read it, I beg. It is all
+right. We keep a good shop. Never have we, my late husband and I, been
+mixed with anything unlawful. Sometimes the bric-a-brac is soiled, but
+our hands and consciences have always been clean. Ask any one along the
+street about the Widow Colard. I owe no one and every one esteems
+me"----
+
+The Widow Colard would have gone on indefinitely if Bernardet had not
+stopped her. She had, at first mention of the police, suddenly turned
+pale, but now she was very red, and her anger displayed itself in a
+torrent of words. He stemmed the flood of verbs.
+
+"I do not accuse you, Mme. Colard, and I have said only what I wished to
+say. I passed by chance your shop; I saw in the window a portrait which
+resembled some one I knew. I ask you the price and I question you about
+its advent into your shop. There is nothing there which concerns you
+personally. I do not suspect you of receiving stolen goods; I do not
+doubt your good faith. I repeat my question. How much do you want for
+this picture?"
+
+"Twenty francs, if you please. That is what it cost me. I do not wish to
+have it draw me into anything troublesome. Take it for nothing, if that
+pleases you."
+
+"Not at all! I intend to pay you. Of what are you thinking, Mme.
+Colard?"
+
+The shopwoman had, like all people of a certain class, a horror of the
+police. The presence of a police inspector in her house seemed at once a
+dishonor and a menace. She felt herself vaguely under suspicion, and she
+felt an impulse to shout aloud her innocence.
+
+Always smiling, the good man, with a gesture like that of a prelate
+blessing his people, endeavored to reassure her, to calm her. But he
+could do nothing with her. She would not be appeased. In the long run
+this was perhaps as well, for she unconsciously, without any intention
+of aiding justice, put some clews into Bernardet's hands which finally
+aided him in tracing the man.
+
+Mme. Colard still rebelled. Did they think she was a spy, an informer?
+She had never--no, never--played such a part. She did not know the young
+man. She had bought the picture as she bought any number of things.
+
+"And what if they should cut off his head because he had confidence in
+entering my shop--I should never forgive myself, never!"
+
+"It is not going to bring Charles Breton to the scaffold. Not at all,
+not at all. It is only to find out who he is, and of whom he obtained
+this portrait. Once more--did nothing in his face strike you?"
+
+"Nothing!" Mme. Colard responded.
+
+She reflected a moment.
+
+"Ah! yes; perhaps. The shape of his hat. A felt hat with wide brim,
+something like those worn in South America or Kareros. You know, the
+kind they call sombrero. The only thing I said to myself was, 'This is
+probably some returned traveler,' and if I had not seen at the bottom of
+the picture, Bordeaux, I should have thought that this might be the
+portrait of some Spaniard, some Peruvian."
+
+Bernardet looked straight into Mme. Colard's spectacles and listened
+intently, and he suddenly remembered what Moniche had said of the odd
+appearance of the man who had, like the woman in black, called on M.
+Rovere.
+
+"Some accomplice!" thought Bernardet.
+
+He again asked Mme. Colard the price of the picture.
+
+"Anything you please," said the woman, still frightened. Bernardet
+smiled.
+
+"Come! come! What do you want for it? Fifty francs, eh? Fifty?"
+
+"Away with your fifty francs! I place it at your disposal for nothing,
+if you need it."
+
+Bernardet paid the sum he had named. He had always exactly, as if by
+principle, a fifty-franc note in his pocketbook. Very little money; a
+few white pieces, but always this note in reserve. One could never tell
+what might hinder him in his researches. He paid, then, this note,
+adding that in all probability Mme. Colard would soon be cited before
+the Examining Magistrate to tell him about this Charles Breton.
+
+"I cannot say anything else, for I do not know anything else," said the
+huge widow, whose breast heaved with emotion.
+
+She wrapped up the picture in a piece of silk paper, then in a piece of
+newspaper, which chanced to be the very one in which Paul Rodier had
+published his famous article on "The Crime of the Boulevard de Clichy."
+Bernardet left enchanted with his "find," and repeated over and over to
+himself: "It is very precious! It is a tid-bit!"
+
+Should he keep on toward the Prefecture to show this "find" to his
+Chief, or should he go at once to hunt up Charles Breton at the address
+he had given?
+
+Bernardet hesitated a moment, then he said to himself that, in a case
+like this, moments were precious; an hour lost was time wasted, and that
+as the address which Breton had given was not far away, he would go
+there first. "Rue de la Condamine, 16," that was only a short walk to
+such a tramper as he was. He had good feet, a sharp eye and sturdy legs;
+he would soon be at the Batignolles. He had taken some famous tramps in
+his time, notably one night when he had scoured Paris in pursuit of a
+malefactor. This, he admitted, had wearied him a little; but this walk
+from the Avenue des Bons-Enfants to the Rue de la Condamine was but a
+spurt. Would he find that a false name and a false address had been
+given? This was but the infancy of art. If, however, he found that this
+Charles Breton really did live at that address and that he had given his
+true name, it would probably be a very simple matter to obtain all the
+information he desired of Jacques Dantin.
+
+"What do I risk? A short walk," thought Bernardet, "a little
+fatigue--that can be charged up to Profit and Loss."
+
+He hurried toward the street and number given. It was a large house,
+several stories high. The concierge was sweeping the stairs, having left
+a card bearing this inscription tacked on the front door. "The porter is
+on the staircase." Bernardet hastened up the stairs, found the man and
+questioned him. There was no Charles Breton in the house; there never
+had been. The man who sold the portrait had given a false name and
+address. Vainly did the police officer describe the individual who had
+visited Mme. Colard's shop. The man insisted that he had never seen any
+one who in the least resembled this toreador in the big felt hat. It was
+useless to insist! Mme. Colard had been deceived. And now, how to find,
+in this immense city of Paris, this bird of passage, who had chanced to
+enter the bric-a-brac shop. The old adage of "the needle in the
+haystack" came to Bernardet's mind and greatly irritated him. But, after
+all, there had been others whom he looked for; there had been others
+whom he had found, and probably he might still be able to find another
+trail. He had a collaborator who seldom failed him--Chance! It was
+destiny which often aided him.
+
+Bernardet took an omnibus in his haste to return to his Chief. He was
+anxious to show his "find" to M. Leriche. When he reached the Prefecture
+he was immediately received. He unwrapped the portrait and showed it to
+M. Leriche.
+
+"But that is Dantin!" cried the Chief.
+
+"Is it not?"
+
+"Without doubt! Dantin when younger, but assuredly Dantin! And where did
+you dig this up?"
+
+Bernardet related his conversation with Mme. Colard and his fruitless
+visit to the Rue de la Condamine.
+
+"Oh, never mind," said M. Leriche. "This discovery is something. The man
+who sold this picture and Dantin are accomplices. Bravo, Bernardet! We
+must let M. Ginory know."
+
+The Examining Magistrate was, like the Chief and Bernardet, struck with
+the resemblance of the portrait to Dantin. His first move would be to
+question the prisoner about the picture. He would go at once to Mazas.
+M. Leriche and Bernardet should accompany him. The presence of the
+police spy might be useful, even necessary.
+
+The Magistrate and the Chief entered a fiacre, while Bernardet mounted
+beside the driver. Bernardet said nothing, although the man tried to
+obtain some information from him. After one or two monosyllabic answers,
+the driver mockingly asked:
+
+"Are you going to the Souriciere (trap) to tease some fat rat?"
+
+M. Ginory and M. Leriche talked together of the _Walkyrie_, of Bayreuth;
+and the Chief asked, through politeness, for news about his candidature
+to the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences.
+
+"Do not let us talk of the Institute," the Magistrate replied. "It is
+like the beginning of a hunt; to sigh for the prize that brings
+unhappiness."
+
+The sombre pile, the Mazas, opened its doors to the three men. They
+traversed the long corridors, with the heavy air which pervaded them in
+spite of all efforts to the contrary, to a small room, sparsely
+furnished (a table, a few chairs, a glass bookcase), which served as an
+office for the Examining Magistrates when they had to hold any
+interviews with the prisoners.
+
+The guardian-in-chief walked along with M. Ginory, M. Leriche followed
+them, and Bernardet respectfully brought up the rear.
+
+"Bring in Jacques Dantin!" M. Ginory ordered. He seated himself at the
+table. M. Leriche took a chair at one side, and Bernardet stood near the
+little bookcase, next the only window in the room.
+
+Jacques Dantin soon appeared, led in by two guards in uniform. He was
+very pale, but still retained his haughty air and his defiant attitude.
+The Magistrate saluted him with a slight movement of the head, and
+Dantin bowed, recognizing in Bernardet the man with whom he had walked
+and conversed behind Rovere's funeral car.
+
+"Be seated, Dantin," M. Ginory said, "and explain to me, I beg, all you
+know about this portrait. You ought to recognize it."
+
+He quickly held the picture before Dantin's eyes, wishing to scrutinize
+his face to see what sudden emotion it would display. Seeing the
+portrait, Dantin shivered and said in a short tone: "It is a picture
+which I gave to Rovere."
+
+"Ah!" said M. Ginory, "you recognize it then?"
+
+"It is my portrait," Jacques Dantin declared. "It was made a long time
+ago. Rovere kept it in his salon. How did it come here?"
+
+"Ah!" again said the Magistrate. "Explain that to me!"
+
+M. Ginory seemed to wish to be a little ironical. But Dantin roughly
+said:
+
+"M. le Juge, I have nothing to explain to you. I understand nothing, I
+know nothing. Or, rather, I know that in your error--an error which you
+will bitterly regret some day or other, I am sure--you have arrested me,
+shut me up in Mazas; but that which I can assure you of is, that I have
+had nothing, do you hear, nothing whatever to do with the murder of my
+friend, and I protest with all my powers against your processes."
+
+"I comprehend that!" M. Ginory coldly replied. "Oh! I understand all the
+disagreeableness of being shut up within four walls. But then, it is
+very simple! In order to go out, one has only to give to the one who has
+a right to know the explanations which are asked. Do you still persist
+in your system? Do you still insist on keeping, I know not what secret,
+which you will not reveal to us?"
+
+"I shall keep it, Monsieur, I have reflected," said Dantin. "Yes, I have
+reflected, and in the solitude to which you have forced me I have
+examined my conscience." He spoke with firmness, less violently than at
+the Palais de Justice, and Bernardet's penetrating little eyes never
+left his face; neither did the Magistrate's, nor the Chief's.
+
+"I am persuaded," Dantin continued, "that this miserable mistake cannot
+last long, and you will recognize the truth. I shall go out, at least
+from here, without having abused a confidence which one has placed in
+me and which I intend to preserve."
+
+"Yes," said M. Ginory, "perfectly, I know your system. You will hold to
+it. It is well. Now, whose portrait is that?"
+
+"It is mine!"
+
+"By whom do you think it was possible that it could have been sold in
+the bric-a-brac shop where it was found."
+
+"I know nothing about it. Probably by the one who found it or stole it
+from M. Rovere's apartment, and who is probably, without the least
+doubt, his assassin."
+
+"That seems very simple to you?"
+
+"It seems very logical."
+
+"Suppose that this should be the exact truth, that does not detract from
+the presumption which implicates you, and from Mme. Moniche's
+deposition, which charges you"----
+
+"Yes, yes, I know. The open safe, the papers spread out, the tete-a-tete
+with Rovere, when the concierge entered the room--that signifies
+nothing!"
+
+"For you, perhaps! For Justice it has a tragic signification. But let us
+return to the portrait. It was you, I suppose, who gave it to Rovere?"
+
+"Yes, it was I," Dantin responded. "Rovere was an amateur in art,
+moreover, my intimate friend. I had no family, I had an old friend, a
+companion of my youth, whom I thought would highly prize that painting.
+It is a fine one--it is by Paul Baudry."
+
+"Ah!" said M. Ginory. "P. B. Those are Baudry's initials?"
+
+"Certainly. After the war--when I had done my duty like others, I say
+this without any intention of defending myself--Paul Baudry was at
+Bordeaux. He was painting some portraits on panels, after
+Holbein--Edmond About's among others. He made mine. It is this one which
+I gave Rovere--the one you hold in your hands."
+
+The Magistrate looked at the small oval painting and M. Leriche put on
+his eyeglasses to examine the quality of the painting. A Baudry!
+
+"What are these scratches around the edge as if nails had been drawn
+across the places?" M. Ginory asked. He held out the portrait to Dantin.
+
+"I do not know. Probably where the frame was taken off."
+
+"No, no! They are rough marks; I can see that. The picture has been
+literally torn from the frame. You ought to know how this panel was
+framed."
+
+"Very simply when I gave it to Rovere. A narrow gilt frame, nothing
+more."
+
+"Had Rovere changed the frame?"
+
+"I do not know. I do not remember. When I was at his apartment the last
+few times I do not remember to have seen the Baudry. I have thought of
+it, but I have no recollection of it."
+
+"Then you cannot furnish any information about the man who sold this
+portrait?"
+
+"None whatever!"
+
+"We might bring you face to face with that woman."
+
+"So be it! She certainly would not recognize me."
+
+"In any case, she will tell us about the man who brought the portrait to
+her."
+
+"She might describe him to me accurately, and even paint him for me,"
+said Dantin quickly. "She can neither insinuate that I know him nor
+prove to you that I am his accomplice. I do not know who he is nor from
+where he comes. I was even ignorant of his existence myself a quarter of
+an hour ago."
+
+"I have only to remand you to your cell," said the Magistrate. "We will
+hunt for the other man."
+
+Dantin, in his turn, said in an ironical tone: "And you will do well!"
+
+M. Ginory made a sign. The guards led out their prisoner. Then, looking
+at the Chief, while Bernardet still remained standing like a soldier
+near the window, the Magistrate said:
+
+"Until there are new developments, Dantin will say nothing. We must look
+for the man in the sombrero."
+
+"Necessarily!" said M. Leriche.
+
+"The needle! The needle! And the hay stack!" thought Bernardet.
+
+The Chief, smiling, turned toward him. "That belongs to you, Bernardet."
+
+"I know it well," said the little man, "but it is not easy. Oh! It is
+not easy at all."
+
+"Bah! you have unearthed more difficult things than that. Do it up
+brown! There is only one clew--the hat"----
+
+"They are not uncommon, those hats, Monsieur Leriche--they are not very
+bad hats. But yet it is a clew--if we live, we shall see."
+
+He stood motionless between the bookcase and the window, like a soldier
+carrying arms, while M. Ginory, shaking his head, said to the chief:
+"And this Dantin, what impression did he make on you?"
+
+"He is a little crack-brained!" replied the Chief.
+
+"Certainly! But guilty--you believe him guilty?"
+
+"Without doubt!"
+
+"Would you condemn him?" he quickly asked as he gazed searchingly at the
+Chief. M. Leriche hesitated.
+
+"Would you condemn him?" M. Ginory repeated, insistently.
+
+The Chief still hesitated a moment, glanced toward the impassive
+Bernardet without being able to read his face, and he said:
+
+"I do not know."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+"I DO not know," thought Bernardet as he returned home. "What one knows
+very well indeed, what one cannot deny, oh, that would be impossible! is
+that on the retina of the dead man's eye, reflected there at the supreme
+moment of the agony, is found the image of this Dantin, his face, his
+features; this man, in a word, denounced by this witness which is worth
+all other witnesses in the world! This assassinated man cast a last look
+upon his murderer as he called for aid; a last cry for 'Help!' in the
+death rattle!--and this man says: 'I do not know!' But the dead man
+knew; and the kodak knows, also. It has no passion, no anger, no hate,
+because it registers what passes; fixes that which is fleeting!"
+
+Bernardet was obstinate in his conviction. He was perfectly rooted in
+it. What if he had not persisted in believing that photography would
+reveal the truth? What weighty reason, what even acceptable one was
+there which obliged Dantin to retain silent in the presence of the
+Examining Magistrate and his registrar--in the secret interview of an
+examination--when in order to escape a prison, an accusation, he had
+only to speak two words? But if Dantin said nothing, was it because he
+had nothing to say? If he had given no explanation, was it because he
+had none to give? An innocent man does not remain silent. If at the
+instant when M. Ginory pressed the ivory button the other day, if the
+man had been able to defend himself, would he not have done it? One knew
+the secret reason of criminals for keeping silent. Their best reason is
+their guilt.
+
+Only, it seemed now certain that Dantin, although guilty, had an
+accomplice. Yes, without doubt, the man with the sombrero, the seller of
+the portrait. Where could he now be in hiding?
+
+"Not easy," Bernardet repeated the words: "Not easy; no, not easy at all
+to run him out of his rabbit hutch."
+
+The Woman in Black, the visitor, would be another important clue. On
+this side the situation seemed a simple one. Or was this woman also an
+accomplice, and would she remain silent, hidden in the Province? Or
+would the death of Rovere draw her to Paris, where she might be
+recognized and become a witness for Justice?
+
+But the days passed. What was called the mystery of the Boulevard de
+Clichy continued to interest and excite the public. Violent and
+perplexing Parliamentary discussions could not distract attention from a
+crime committed in broad daylight, almost as one might say, in the
+street, and which made one doubt the security of the city, the
+efficiency of the police. The fall of a Ministry, predicted each morning
+and anticipated in advance, could not thrust aside morbid interest in
+this murder. The death of the ex-Consul was a grand actuality!
+
+Jacques Dantin thus became a dramatic personage; the reporters created
+legends about him; some declared him guilty and brought up in support of
+their conviction some anecdotes, some tales from the clubs, given as
+proofs; others asked if the suppositions were sufficiently well based to
+accuse a man in advance of trial, and these latter ardently took up his
+defense. Paul Rodier had even, with much dexterity and eloquence,
+diplomatically written two articles, one on either side of the question.
+
+"It is," he said to himself, "the sure way of having told the truth on
+one side or the other."
+
+Bernardet did not renounce for an instant the hope of finding the man
+who had sold the picture. It was not the first time that he had picked
+the needle from a cartful of hay. Paris is large, but this human sea has
+its particular currents, as the ocean has special tides, and the police
+officer knew it well. Here or there, some day he would meet the man,
+cast up by the torrent like a waif.
+
+First of all, the man was probably a stranger from some foreign land.
+Wearing a hat like a Spaniard, he had not had time to change the style
+of dress of the country from which he had come in search of adventures.
+Bernardet haunted the hotels, searched the registers, made conversation
+with the lodgers. He found poor persons who had come from foreign
+countries, but whose motives for coming to Paris were all right.
+Bernardet never stopped searching a moment; he went everywhere, curious
+and prying--and it pleased him, when he found a leisure evening, to go
+to some of the strange wine shops or ale houses (called cabarets) to
+find subjects for observation. These cabarets are very numerous on the
+outskirts of Montmartre, in the streets and boulevards at the foot of
+the Butte. Bizarre inventions, original and disagreeable creations,
+where the ingenuity of the enterprisers sometimes made them hideous in
+order to attract; to cater to the idle, and to hold the loungers from
+among the higher classes. Cabarets born of the need for novelty, which
+might stimulate the blase; the demand for something eccentric almost to
+morbid irony. A _Danse Macabre_ trod to the measures of an operetta;
+pleasantries of the bunglers adopting the cure-alls of the saw-bones,
+and juggling with their empty heads while dreaming the dreams of a
+Hamlet.
+
+Cabaret du Squelette!
+
+The announcement of the droll promises--apparitions, visions,
+phantoms--had often made him smile when he passed near there to go to
+the Prefecture; this wineshop, the front of which was bordered with
+black, like a letter announcing a death, and which bore, grating as it
+swung at the end of an iron rod, a red lantern for a sign.
+
+His little girls, when he laughingly spoke of the cabaret where the
+waiters were dressed like undertakers' assistants, turned pale, and
+plump little Mme. Bernardet, ordinarily smiling, would say with a sigh:
+"Is it possible that such sacrilegious things are permitted in the
+quarter?"
+
+Bernardet good-naturedly replied: "Ah, my dear, where is the harm?"
+
+"I know what I am talking about," his good wife said; "they are the
+pleasure of the unhealthy minded. They mock at death as they mock at
+everything else. Where will it all end? We shall see it"----
+
+"Or we shall not see it," interrupted her husband, laughingly.
+
+He went in there one evening, having a little time to himself, as he
+would have gone into a theatre. He knew something about this Cabaret du
+Squelette (meaning the wine shop of the skeleton). He found the place
+very droll.
+
+A small hall which had a few months before been a common wine shop had
+been transformed into a lugubrious place. The walls were painted a dead
+black, and were hung with a large number of paintings--scenes from
+masked balls, gondola parades, serenades with a balcony scene, some of
+the lovers' rendezvous of Venice and an ideal view of Granada, with
+couples gazing at each other and sighing in the gondolas on the lagoons,
+or in the Andalusian courts--and in this strange place with its romantic
+pictures, souvenirs of Musset or of Carlo Gozzi, the tables were made in
+the form of coffins with lighted candles standing upon them, and the
+waiters were dressed as undertakers' assistants, with shiny black hats
+trimmed with crape, on their heads.
+
+"What poison will you drink before you die?" asked one of the creatures
+of Bernardet.
+
+Bernardet sat and gazed about him. A few "high-flyers" from the other
+side of Paris were there. Here and there a thief from that quarter sat
+alone at a table. Some elegants in white cravats, who had come there in
+correct evening dress, were going later, after the opera, to sup with
+some premiere. The police officer understood very well why the blase
+came there. They wished to jog their jaded appetites; they sought to
+find some _piment_, a curry, spice to season the tameness of their daily
+existence. The coffin-shaped tables upon which they leaned their elbows
+amused them. Several of them had asked for a _bavaroise_, as they were
+on milk diet.
+
+They pointed out to each other the gas flaming from the jets fashioned
+in the form of a broken shin-bone.
+
+"A little patience, my friends," said a sort of manager, who was dressed
+in deep mourning. "Before long we will adjourn to the Cave of Death!"
+
+The drinkers in white cravats shouted. Bernardet experienced, on the
+contrary, what Mme. Bernardet would have called a "creepy" sensation.
+Seasoned as he was to the bloody and villainous aspect of crime, he felt
+the instinctive shrinking of a healthy and level-headed bourgeois
+against these drolleries of the brain-diseased upper class and the
+pleasantries of the blase decadents.
+
+At a certain moment, and after an explanation given by the manager, the
+gas was turned off, and the lovers in the gondolas, the guitar players,
+the singers of Spanish songs, the dancers infatuated with the Moulin
+Rouge, changed suddenly in sinister fashion. In place of the blond heads
+and rosy cheeks, skulls appeared; the smiles became grins which showed
+the teeth in their fleshless gums. The bodies, clothed in doublets, in
+velvets and satins, a moment ago, were made by some interior
+illumination to change into hideous skeletons. In his mocking tones the
+manager explained and commented on the metamorphosis, adding to the
+funeral spectacle the pleasantry of a buffoon.
+
+"See! diseased Parisians, what you will be on Sunday!"
+
+The light went out suddenly; the skeletons disappeared; the sighing
+lovers in the gondolas on the lagoons of Venice reappeared; the
+Andalusian sweethearts again gazed into each other's eyes and sang their
+love songs. Some of the women laughed, but the laughs sounded
+constrained.
+
+"Droll! this city of Paris," Bernardet thought. He sat there, leaning
+back against the wall, where verses about death were printed among the
+white tears--as in those lodges of Free Masons where an outsider is shut
+up in order to give him time to make his will--when the door opened and
+Bernardet saw a tall young man of stalwart and resolute mien enter. A
+black, curly beard surrounded his pale face. As he entered he cast a
+quick glance around the hall, the air of which was rather thick with
+cigar smoke. He seemed to be about thirty years of age, and had the air
+of an artist, a sculptor, or a painter, together with something military
+in his carriage. But what suddenly struck Bernardet was his hat, a large
+gray, felt hat, with a very wide brim, like the sombreros which the bull
+fighters wear.
+
+Possibly, a few people passing through Paris might be found wearing such
+hats. But they would probably be rare, and in order to find the seller
+of Jacques Dantin's portrait, Bernardet had only this one clew.
+
+"Oh! such a mean, little, weak, clew! But one must use it, just the
+same!" Bernardet had said.
+
+What if this young man with the strange hat was, by chance, the unknown
+for whom he was seeking? It was not at all probable. No, when one
+thought of it--not at all probable. But truth is sometimes made up of
+improbabilities, and Bernardet again experienced the same shock, the
+instinctive feeling that he had struck the trail, which he felt when the
+young man entered the wine shop.
+
+"That hat!" murmured Bernardet, sipping his wine and stealing glances
+over the rim of his glass at the young man. The unknown seemed to play
+directly into the police officer's hand. After standing by the door a
+few moments, and looking about the place, he walked over to the
+coffin-shaped table at which Bernardet was seated, bringing himself face
+to face with the officer. One of the waiters in his mourning dress came
+to take his order, and lighted another candle, which he placed where its
+rays fell directly on the young man's face. Thus Bernardet was able to
+study him at his ease. The pale face, with its expression, uneasy and
+slightly intense, struck Bernardet at once. That white face, with its
+black beard, with its gleaming eyes, was not to be passed by with a
+casual glance. The waiter placed a glass of brandy before him; he placed
+his elbows on the table and leaned his chin upon his hands. He was
+evidently not a habitue of the place nor a resident of the quarter.
+There was something foreign about his appearance. His glance was steady,
+as that of one who searches the horizon, looks at running water,
+contemplates the sea, asking for some "good luck" of the unknown.
+
+"It would be strange," thought Bernardet, "if a simple hat and no other
+clew should put us upon the track of the man for whom we are searching."
+
+At once, with the ingenuity of a master of dramatic art, the agent began
+to plot, and to put into action what lawyers, pleading and turning and
+twisting a cause this way and that, call _an effect_. He waited until
+the manager informed them that they were about to pass into the Cave of
+Death, and gave them all an invitation into the adjoining hall; then,
+profiting by the general movement, he approached the unknown, and,
+almost shoulder to shoulder, he walked along beside him, through a
+narrow, dark passage to a little room, where, on a small stage stood,
+upright, an empty coffin.
+
+It was a doleful spectacle, which the Cabaret du Squelette (the wine
+shop of the skeleton) offered to its clientele of idle loungers and
+morbid curiosity seekers attracted to its halls by these exhibitions.
+Bernardet knew it all very well, and he knew by just what play of
+lights, what common chemical illuminations, they gave to the lookers on
+the sinister illusion of the decomposition of a corpse in its narrow
+home. This phantasmagoria, to which the people from the Boulevard came,
+in order to be amused, he had seen many times in the little theatres in
+the fairs at Neuilly. The proprietor of the cabaret had explained it to
+him; he had been curious and very keen about it, and so he followed the
+crowd into this little hall, to look once more at the image of a man in
+the coffin. He knew well to what purpose he could put it. The place was
+full. Men and women were standing about; the black walls made the narrow
+place look still smaller. Occasional bizarre pleasantries were heard and
+nervous laughs rang out. Why is it, that no matter how sceptical people
+may be, the idea, the proximity, the appearance of death gives them an
+impression of uneasiness, a singular sensation which is often displayed
+in nervous laughs or sepulchral drolleries?
+
+Bernardet had not left the side of the young man with the gray felt hat.
+He could see his face distinctly in the light of the little hall, and
+could study it at his ease. In the shadows which lurked about them the
+young man's face seemed like a white spot. The officer's sharp eyes
+never left it for a moment.
+
+The manager now asked if some one would try the experiment. This was to
+step into the open coffin--that box, as he said--"from which your
+friends, your neighbors, can see you dematerialize and return to
+nothingness."
+
+"Come, my friends," he continued, in his ironical tones, "this is a fine
+thing; it will permit your best friends to see you deliquesce! Are there
+any married people here? It is only a question of tasting, in advance,
+the pleasures of a widowhood. Would you like to see your husband
+disappear, my sister? My brother, do you wish to see your wife
+decompose? Sacrifice yourselves, I beg of you! Come! Come up here! Death
+awaits you!"
+
+They laughed, but here and there a laugh sounded strident or hysterical;
+the laugh did not ring true, but had the sound of cracked crystal. No
+one stirred. This parody of death affected even these hardened
+spectators.
+
+"Oh, well, my friends, there is a cadaver belonging to the establishment
+which we can use. It is a pity! You may readily understand that we do
+not take the dead for companions."
+
+As no one among the spectators would enter the coffin, the manager, with
+a gesture, ordered one of the supernumeraries of the cabaret to enter;
+from an open door the figurant glided across the stage and entered the
+coffin, standing upright. The manager wrapped him about with a shroud,
+leaving only the pale face of the pretended dead man exposed above this
+whiteness. The man smiled.
+
+"He laughs, Messieurs, he laughs still!" said the manager. "You will
+soon see him pay for that laugh. '_Rome rit et mourut!_' as Bossuet
+said."
+
+Some of the audience shouted applause to this quotation from a famous
+author. Bernardet did not listen; he was studying from a corner of his
+eye his neighbor's face. The man gazed with a sort of fascination at
+this fantastic performance which was taking place before him. He
+frowned, he bit his lips; his eyes were almost ferocious in expression.
+The figurant in the coffin continued to laugh.
+
+"Look! look keenly!" went on the manager, "you will see your brother
+dematerialize after becoming changed in color. The flesh will disappear
+and you will see his skeleton. Think, think, my brothers, this is the
+fate which awaits you, perhaps, soon, on going away from here; think of
+the various illnesses and deaths by accidents which await you!
+Contemplate the magic spectacle offered by the Cabaret du Squelette and
+remember that you are dust and that to dust you must return! Make,
+wisely, this reflection, which the intoxicated man made to another man
+in like condition, but asleep. 'And that is how I shall be on Sunday!'
+While waiting, my brothers and sisters, for nothingness, look at the
+dematerialization of your contemporary if you please!"
+
+The play of lights, while the man was talking, began to throw a greenish
+pallor and to make spots at first transparent upon the orbits of the
+eyes, then, little by little, the spots seemed to grow stronger, to
+blacken, to enlarge. The features, lightly picked out, appeared to
+change gradually, to take on gray and confused tints, to slowly
+disappear as under a veil, a damp vapor which covered, devoured that
+face, now unrecognizable! It has been said that the manner in which this
+phenomenon was managed was a remarkable thing; it is true, for this
+human body seemed literally to dissolve before this curious crowd, now
+become silent and frightened. The work of death was accomplished there
+publicly, thanks to the illusion of lighting. The livid man who smiled a
+few moments before was motionless, fixed, then passing through some
+singular changes, the flesh seemed to fall from him in----
+
+Suddenly the play of lights made him disappear from the eyes of the
+spectators and they saw, thanks to reflections made by mirrors, only a
+skeleton. It was the world of spectres and the secret of the tombs
+revealed to the crowd by a kind of scientific magic lantern.
+
+Bernardet did not desire to wait longer to strike his blow--this was the
+exact moment to do it--the psychological moment!
+
+The eager look of the man in the sombrero revealed a deep trouble. There
+was in this look something more than the curiosity excited by a novel
+spectacle. The muscles of his pale face twitched as with physical
+suffering; in his eyes Bernardet read an internal agony.
+
+"Ah!" thought the police officer, "the living eye is a book which one
+can read, as well as a dead man's eye."
+
+Upon the stage the lights were rendering even more sinister the figurant
+who was giving to this morbidly curious crowd the comedy of death. One
+would have now thought it was one of those atrocious paintings made in
+the studios of certain Spanish painters in the _putridero_ of a Valles
+Leal. The flesh, by a remarkable scientific combination of lights, was
+made to seem as if falling off, and presented the horrible appearance of
+a corpse in a state of decomposition. The lugubrious vision made a very
+visible shudder pass over the audience. Then Bernardet, drawing himself
+up to his full height so as to get a good view of the face of this man
+so much taller, and approaching as near to him as possible, in fact, so
+that his elbow and upper arm touched the young man's, he slowly,
+deliberately dropped, one by one, these words:
+
+"That is about how M. Rovere ought to be now"----
+
+And suddenly the young man's face expressed a sensation of fright, as
+one sees in the face of a pedestrian who suddenly finds that he is about
+to step upon a viper.
+
+"Or how he will be soon!" added the little man, with an amiable smile.
+Bernardet dissimulated under this amiability an intense joy. Holding his
+arm and elbow in an apparently careless manner close to his neighbor as
+he pronounced Rovere's name, Bernardet felt his neighbor's whole body
+tremble, and that he gave a very perceptible start. Why had he been so
+quickly moved by an unknown name if it had not recalled to his mind some
+frightful thought? The man might, of course, know, as the public did,
+all the details of the crime, but, with his strong, energetic face, his
+resolute look, he did not appear like a person who would be troubled by
+the recital of a murder, the description of a bloody affray, or even by
+the frightful scene which had just passed before his eyes in the hall.
+
+"A man of that stamp is not chicken-hearted," thought Bernardet. "No!
+no!" Hearing those words evoked the image of the dead man, Rovere; the
+man was not able to master his violent emotion, and he trembled, as if
+under an electrical discharge. The shudder had been violent, of short
+duration, however, as if he had mastered his emotion by his strong will.
+In his involuntary movement he had displayed a tragic eloquence.
+Bernardet had seen in the look, in the gesture, in the movement of the
+man's head, something of trouble, of doubt, of terror, as in a flash of
+lightning in the darkness of night one sees the bottom of a pool.
+
+Bernardet smilingly said to him:
+
+"This sight is not a gay one!"
+
+"No," the man answered, and he also attempted to smile.
+
+He looked back to the stage, where the sombre play went on.
+
+"That poor Rovere!" Bernardet said.
+
+The other man now looked at Bernardet as if to read his thoughts and to
+learn what signification the repetition of the same name had. Bernardet
+sustained, with a naive look, this mute interrogation. He allowed
+nothing of his thoughts to be seen in the clear, childlike depths of his
+eyes. He had the air of a good man, frightened by a terrible murder, and
+who spoke of the late victim as if he feared for himself. He waited,
+hoping that the man would speak.
+
+In some of Bernardet's readings he had come across the magic rule
+applicable to love: "Never go! Wait for the other to come!"--"_Nec ire,
+fac venire_"--applicable also to hate, to that duel of magnetism between
+the hunted man and the police spy, and Bernardet waited for the other to
+"come!"
+
+Brusquely, after a silence, while on the little stage the transformation
+was still going on, the man asked in a dry tone:
+
+"Why do you speak to me of M. Rovere?"
+
+Bernardet affably replied: "I? Because every one talks of it. It is the
+actuality of the moment. I live in that quarter. It was quite near there
+that it happened, the affair"----
+
+"I know!" interrupted the other.
+
+The unknown had not pronounced ten words in questioning and replying,
+and yet Bernardet found two clues simply insignificant--terrible in
+reality. "I know!" was the man's reply, in a short tone, as if he wished
+to push aside, to thrust away, a troublesome thought. The tone, the
+sound of the words, had struck Bernardet. But one word especially--the
+word Monsieur before Rovere's name. "Monsieur Rovere? Why did he speak
+to me of Monsieur Rovere?" Bernardet thought.
+
+It seemed, then, that he knew the dead man.
+
+All the people gathered in this little hall, if asked in regard to this
+murder would have said: "Rovere!" "The Rovere affair!" "The Rovere
+murder!" Not one who had not known the victim would have said:
+
+"Monsieur Rovere!"
+
+The man knew him then. This simple word, in the officer's opinion, meant
+much.
+
+The manager now announced that, having become a skeleton, the dear
+brother who had lent himself to this experiment would return to his
+natural state, "fresher and rosier than before." He added, pleasantly,
+"A thing which does not generally happen to ordinary skeletons!"
+
+This vulgar drollery caused a great laugh, which the audience heartily
+indulged in. It made an outlet for their pent-up feelings, and they all
+felt as if they had awakened from a nightmare. The man in the sombrero,
+whose pale face was paler than before, was the only one who did not
+smile. He even frowned fiercely (noted by Bernardet) when the manager
+added:
+
+"You are not in the habit of seeing a dead man resuscitated the next
+day. Between us, it would keep the world pretty full."
+
+"Evidently," thought Bernardet, "my young gentleman is ill at ease."
+
+His only thought was to find out his name, his personality, to establish
+his identity and to learn where he had spent his life, and especially
+his last days. But how?
+
+He did not hesitate long. He left the place, even before the man in the
+coffin had reappeared, smiling at the audience. He glided through the
+crowd, repeating, "Pardon!" "I beg pardon!" traversed rapidly the hall
+where newcomers were conversing over their beverages, and stepped out
+into the street, looked up and down. A light fog enveloped everything,
+and the gaslights and lights in the shop windows showed ghostly through
+it. The passers-by, the cabs, the tramways, bore a spectral look.
+
+What Bernardet was searching for was a policeman. He saw two chatting
+together and walking slowly along under the leafless trees. In three
+steps, at each step turning his head to watch the people coming out of
+the cabaret, he reached the men. While speaking to them he did not take
+his eyes from the door of that place where he had left the young man in
+the gray felt hat.
+
+"Dagonin," he said, "you must follow me, if you please, and 'pull me
+in!' I am going to pick a drunken quarrel with a particular person.
+Interfere and arrest us both. Understand?"
+
+"Perfectly," Dagonin replied.
+
+He looked at his comrade, who carried his hand to his shako and saluted
+Bernardet.
+
+The little man who had given his directions in a quick tone, was already
+far away. He stood near the door of the cabaret gazing searchingly at
+each person who came out. The looks he cast were neither direct,
+menacing nor even familiar. He had pulled his hat down to his eyebrows,
+and he cast side glances at the crowd pouring from the door of the wine
+shop.
+
+He was astonished that the man in the sombrero had not yet appeared.
+Possibly he had stopped, on his way out, in the front hall. Glancing
+through the open door, Bernardet saw that he was right. The young man
+was seated at one of those coffin-shaped oaken tables, with a glass of
+greenish liquor before him. "He needs alcohol to brace him up," growled
+the officer.
+
+The door was shut again.
+
+"I can wait till he has finished his absinthe," said Bernardet to
+himself.
+
+He had not long to wait. After a small number of persons had left the
+place, the door opened and the man in the gray felt hat appeared,
+stopped on the threshold, and, as Bernardet had done, scanned the
+horizon and the street. Bernardet turned his back and seemed to be
+walking away from the wine shop, leaving the man free. With a keen
+glance or two over his shoulder toward him, Bernardet crossed the street
+and hurried along at a rapid pace, in order to gain on the young man,
+and by this manoeuvre to find himself directly in front of the
+unknown. The man seemed to hesitate, walked quickly down the Boulevard a
+few steps toward the Place Pigalle, in the direction where Rovere's
+apartments were, but suddenly stopped, turned on his heel, repassed the
+Cabaret du Squelette, and went toward the Moulin Rouge, which at first,
+Bernardet thought, he was about to enter. As he stood there the vanes of
+the Moulin Rouge, turning about, lighted up the windows of the opposite
+buildings and made them look as if they were on fire. At last, obeying
+another impulse, he suddenly crossed the Boulevard, as if to return
+into Paris, leaving Montmartre, the cabarets, and Rovere's house behind
+him. He walked briskly along, and ran against a man--a little man--whom
+he had not noticed, who seemed to suddenly detach himself from the wall,
+and who fell against his breast, hiccoughing and cursing in vicious
+tones.
+
+"Imbecile!"
+
+The young man wished to push away the intoxicated man who, with hat over
+his eyes, clung to him and kept repeating:
+
+"The street--the street--is it not free--the street?"
+
+Yes, it was certainly a drunken man. Not a man in a smock, but a little
+fellow, a bourgeois, with hat askew and thick voice.
+
+"I--I am not stopping you. The street is free--I tell you!"
+
+"Well, if it is free, I want it!"
+
+The voice was vigorous, but showed sudden anger, a strident tone, a
+slight foreign accent, Spanish, perhaps.
+
+The drunken man probably thought him insolent for, still hiccoughing, he
+answered:
+
+"Oh, you want it, do you? You want it? I want it! The king says 'we
+wish!' don't you know?"
+
+With another movement, he lost his equilibrium and half fell, his head
+hanging over, and he clutched the man he held in a sudden embrace.
+
+"It is mine also--the street--you know!"
+
+With sudden violence, the man disembarrassed himself of this caressing
+creature; he thrust aside his clinging arms with a movement so quick and
+strong that the intoxicated man, this time, fell, his hat rolled into
+the gutter, and he lay on the sidewalk.
+
+But immediately, with a bound, he was on his feet, and as the man went
+calmly on his way, he followed him, seized his coat and clutched him so
+tightly that he could not proceed.
+
+"Pardon;" he said, "you cannot go away like that!"
+
+Then, as the light from a gas lamp fell on the little man's face, the
+young man recognized his neighbor of the cabaret, who had said to him:
+
+"See, that is how Rovere must look!"
+
+At this moment, Dagonin and his comrade appeared on the scene and laid
+vigorous hands on them both; the young man made a quick, instinctive
+movement toward his right pocket, where, no doubt, he kept a revolver or
+knife. Bernardet seized his wrist, he twisted it and said:
+
+"Do nothing rash!"
+
+The young man was very strong, but the huge Dagonin had Herculean biceps
+and the other man did not lack muscles. Fright, moreover, seemed to
+paralyze this tall, young gallant, who, as he saw that he was being
+hustled toward a police station, demanded:
+
+"Have you arrested me, and why?"
+
+"First for having struck me," Bernardet replied, still bareheaded, and
+to whom a gamin now handed his soiled hat, saying to him:
+
+"Is this yours, Monsieur Bernardet?"
+
+Bernardet recognized in his own quarter! That was glory!
+
+The man seemed to wish to defend himself and still struggled, but one
+remark of Dagonin's seemed to pacify him:
+
+"No rebellion! There is nothing serious about your arrest. Do not make
+it worse."
+
+The young man really believed that it was only a slight matter and he
+would be liberated at once. The only thing that disquieted him was that
+this intoxicated man, suddenly become sober, had spoken to him as he did
+a few moments before in the cabaret.
+
+The four men walked quickly along in the shadow of the buildings,
+through the almost deserted streets, where the shopkeepers were putting
+out their lights and closing up their shops. Scarcely any one who met
+them would have realized that three of these men were taking the fourth
+to a police station.
+
+A tri-color flag floated over a door lighted by a red lantern; the four
+men entered the place and found themselves in a narrow, warm hall, where
+the agents of the police were either sleeping on benches or reading
+around the stove by the light of the gas jets above their heads.
+
+Bernardet, looking dolefully at his broken and soiled hat, begged the
+young man to give his name and address to the Chief of the Post. The
+young man then quickly understood that his questioner of the Cabaret du
+Squelette had caught him in a trap. He looked at him with an expression
+of violent anger--of concentrated rage.
+
+Then he said:
+
+"My name? What do you want of that? I am an honest man. Why did you
+arrest me? What does it mean?"
+
+"Your name?" repeated Bernardet.
+
+The man hesitated.
+
+"Oh, well! I am called Prades. Does that help you any?"
+
+The man wrote: "Prades. P-r-a-d-e-s with an accent. Prades. First name?"
+
+"Charles, if you wish!"
+
+"Oh!" said Bernardet, noticing the slight difference in the tone of his
+answer. "We wish nothing. We wish only the truth."
+
+"I have told it."
+
+Charles Prades furnished some further information in regard to himself.
+He was staying at a hotel in the Rue de Paradis-Poissonsiere, a small
+hotel used by commercial travelers and merchants of the second class. He
+had been in Paris only a month.
+
+Where was he from? He said that he came from Sydney, where he was
+connected with a commercial house. Or rather he had given up the
+situation to come to Paris to seek his fortune. But while speaking of
+Sydney he had in his rather rambling answers let fall the name of Buenos
+Ayres, and Bernardet remembered that Buenos Ayres was the place where M.
+Rovere had been French Consul. The officer paid no attention to this at
+the time. For what good? Prades's real examination would be conducted by
+M. Ginory. He, Bernardet, was not an examining magistrate. He was the
+ferret who hunted out criminals.
+
+This Prades was stupefied, then furious, when, the examination over, he
+learned that he was not to be immediately set at liberty.
+
+What! An absurd quarrel, a collision without a wound, in a street in
+Paris, was sufficient to hold a man and make him pass the night in the
+station house, with all the vagabonds of both sexes collected there!
+
+"You may bemoan your fate to yourself to-morrow morning!" said
+Bernardet.
+
+In the meantime they searched this man, who, very pale, making visibly
+powerful efforts to control himself, biting his lips and his black
+beard, while they examined his pocketbook, while they looked at a
+Spanish knife with a short blade, which he had (Bernardet had divined it
+at the time of his arrest) in his right pocket.
+
+The pocketbook revealed nothing. It contained some receipted weekly
+bills of the hotel in the Rue de Paradis, some envelopes without
+letters, without stamps and bearing the name, "Charles Prades,
+Merchant," two bank bills of 100 francs--nothing more.
+
+Bernardet very simply asked Prades how it was that he had upon his
+person addressed letters which he evidently had not received, as they
+were not stamped. He replied:
+
+"They are not letters. They are addresses which I gave instead of
+visiting cards, as I had not had time to procure cards."
+
+"Then the addresses are in your writing?"
+
+"Yes," Prades answered.
+
+The police officer looked at them again; then, saluting the brigadier
+and his men, wished them good-night, and even added a little gesture,
+rather mocking, in the direction of the arrested man. Prades made an
+angry, almost menacing, movement toward Bernardet. The guards standing
+about pulled him back, while the plump, smiling little man, caressing
+his sandy mustache and humming a tune, went out into the street.
+
+As he reached the passage which led to his house this couplet came
+merrily from his lips as walked quickly along:
+
+        "Prends ton fusil, Gregoire,
+        Prends ta gourde pourboire,
+        Nos Messieurs sont partis
+        A la chasse aux perdrix."
+
+One would have taken M. Bernardet for a happy little bourgeois, going
+home from some theatre through the deserted streets and repeating a
+verse from some vaudeville, rather than a police spy who had just
+secured a prize. He walked quickly, he walked gaily. He reached his
+home, where Mme. Bernardet, always rosy and pleasant, awaited him, and
+where his three little girls were sleeping. He felt that, like the Roman
+emperor, he had not lost his day.
+
+He again hummed the quatrain, and, although not in a loud tone, still it
+sounded like a far off fanfare of victory in the gray fog of this Paris
+night.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+M. GINORY was not without uneasiness when he thought of the detention of
+Jacques Dantin. Without doubt, all prisoners, all accused persons are
+reticent; they try to hide their guilt under voluntary silence. They do
+not speak, because they have sworn not to. They are bound, one knows not
+by whom, by an oath which they cannot break. It is the ordinary system
+of the guilty who cannot defend themselves. Mystery seems to them
+safety.
+
+But Dantin, intimately acquainted with Rovere's life, might be
+acquainted with some secret which he could not disclose and which did
+not pertain to him at all. What secret? Had not an examining magistrate
+a right to know everything? Had not an accused man a right to speak?
+Either Dantin had nothing to reveal and he was playing a comedy and was
+guilty, or, if by a few words, by a confidence made to the magistrate he
+could escape an accusation, recover his liberty, without doubt he would
+speak after having kept an inexplicable silence. How could one suppose
+that an innocent man would hold, for a long time, to this mute system?
+
+The discovery of the portrait in Mme. Colard's shop ought, naturally, to
+give to the affair a new turn. The arrest of Charles Prades brought an
+important element to these researches. He would be examined by M. Ginory
+the next morning, after having been questioned by the Commissary of
+Police.
+
+Bernardet, spruce, freshly shaven, was there, and seemed in his
+well-brushed redingote, like a little abbe come to assist at some
+curious ceremony.
+
+On the contrary, Prades, after a sleepless night, a night of agony,
+paler than the evening before, his face fierce and its muscles
+contracted, had a haggard expression, and he blinked his eyes like a
+night bird suddenly brought into glaring sunlight. He repeated before
+the Examining Magistrate what he had said to the brigadier. But his
+voice, vibrant a few hours before, had become heavy, almost raucous, as
+the haughty expression of his face had become sullen and tragic.
+
+The Examining Magistrate had cited Mme. Colard, the shopkeeper, to
+appear before him. She instantly recognized in this Prades the man who
+had sold her the little panel by Paul Baudry.
+
+He denied it. He did not know of what they were talking. He had never
+seen this woman. He knew nothing about any portrait.
+
+"It belonged to M. Rovere," the magistrate replied, "M. Rovere, the
+murdered man; M. Rovere, who was consul at Buenos Ayres, and you spoke,
+yesterday, of Buenos Ayres, in the examination at the station house in
+the Rue de la Rochefoucauld."
+
+"M. Rovere? Buenos Ayres?" repeated the young man, rolling his sombrero
+around his fingers.
+
+He repeated that he did not know the ex-Consul, that he had never been
+in South America, that he had come from Sydney.
+
+Bernardet, at this moment, interrupted him by taking his hat from him
+without saying a word, and Prades cast a very angry look at the little
+man.
+
+M. Ginory understood Bernardet's move and approved with a smile. He
+looked in the inside of the sombrero which Bernardet handed to him.
+
+The hat bore the address of Gordon, Smithson & Co., Berner Street,
+London.
+
+"But, after all," thought the Magistrate, "Buenos Ayres is one of the
+markets for English goods."
+
+"That is a hat bought at Sydney," Prades (who had understood) explained.
+
+Before the bold, decided, almost violent affirmations which Mme. Colard
+made that this was certainly the seller of the portrait, the young man
+lost countenance a little. He kept saying over and over: "You deceive
+yourself. Madame, I have never spoken to you, I have never seen you."
+
+When M. Ginory asked her if she still persisted in saying that this was
+the man who had sold her the picture, she said:
+
+"Do I still persist? With my neck under the guillotine I would persist,"
+and she kept repeating: "I am sure of it! I am sure of it!"
+
+This preliminary examination brought about no decisive result. It was
+certain that, if this portrait had been in the possession of this young
+man and been sold by him, that he, Charles Prades, was an accomplice of
+Dantin's, if not the author of the crime. They ought, then, to be
+brought face to face, and, possibly, this might bring about an immediate
+result. And why not have this meeting take place at once, before Prades
+was sent where Dantin was, at Mazas?
+
+M. Ginory, who had uttered this word "Mazas," noticed the expression of
+terror which flashed across and suddenly transfigured the young man's
+face.
+
+Prades stammered:
+
+"Then--you will hold me? Then--I am not free?"
+
+M. Ginory did not reply. He gave an order that this Prades should be
+guarded until the arrival of Dantin from Mazas.
+
+In Mazas, in that walled prison, in the cell which had already made him
+ill, Jacques Dantin sat. This man, with the trooper's air, seemed almost
+to be in a state of collapse. When the guard came to his cell he drew
+himself up and endeavored to collect all his energy; and when the door
+was opened and he was called he appeared quite like himself. When he saw
+the prison wagon which had brought him to Mazas and now awaited to take
+him to the Palais de Justice he instinctively recoiled; then, recovering
+himself, he entered the narrow vehicle.
+
+The idea, the sensation that he was so near all this life--yet so
+far--that he was going through these streets, filled with carriages,
+with men and women who were free, gave him a desperate, a nervous sense
+of irritation.
+
+The air which they breathed, he breathed and felt fan his brow--but
+through a grating. They arrived at the Palais and Jacques Dantin
+recognized the staircases which he had previously mounted, that led to
+the Examining Magistrate's room. He entered the narrow room where M.
+Ginory awaited him. Dantin saluted the Magistrate with a gesture which,
+though courteous, seemed to have a little bravado in it; as a salutation
+with a sword before a duel. Then he glanced around, astonished to see,
+between two guards, a man whom he did not recognize.
+
+M. Ginory studied them. If he knew this Prades, who also curiously
+returned his look, Jacques Dantin was a great comedian, because no
+indication, not the slightest involuntary shudder, not the faintest
+trace of an expression of having seen him before, crossed his face. Even
+M. Ginory's keen eyes could detect nothing. He had asked that Bernardet
+be present at the meeting, and the little man's face, become serious,
+almost severe, was turned, with eager interrogation in its expression,
+toward Dantin. Bernardet also was unable to detect the faintest emotion
+which could be construed into an acknowledgment of ever having seen this
+young man before. Generally prisoners would, unconsciously, permit a
+gesture, a glance, a something, to escape them when they were brusquely
+confronted, unexpectedly, with some accomplice. This time not a muscle
+of Dantin's face moved, not an eyelash quivered.
+
+M. Ginory motioned Jacques Dantin to a seat directly in front of him,
+where the light would fall full upon his face. Pointing out Prades, he
+asked:
+
+"Do you recognize this man?"
+
+Dantin, after a second or two, replied:
+
+"No; I have never seen him."
+
+"Never?"
+
+"I believe not; he is unknown to me!"
+
+"And you, Prades, have you ever seen Jacques Dantin?"
+
+"Never," said Prades, in his turn. His voice seemed hoarse, compared
+with the brief, clear response made by Dantin.
+
+"He is, however, the original of the portrait which you sold to Mme.
+Colard."
+
+"The portrait?"
+
+"Look sharply at Dantin. Look at him well," repeated M. Ginory. "You
+must recognize that he is the original of the portrait in question."
+
+"Yes;" Prades replied. His eyes were fixed upon the prisoner.
+
+"Ah!" the Magistrate joyously exclaimed, asking: "And how, tell me, did
+you so quickly recognize the original of the portrait which you saw only
+an instant in my room?"
+
+"I do not know," stammered Prades, not comprehending the gravity of a
+question put in an insinuating, almost amiable tone.
+
+"Oh, well!" continued M. Ginory, still in a conciliating tone, "I am
+going to explain to you. It is certain that you recognize these
+features, because you had a long time in which to contemplate them;
+because you had it a long time in your hands when you were trying to
+pull off the frame."
+
+"The frame? What frame?" asked the young man stupefied, not taking his
+eyes from the Magistrate's face, which seemed to him endowed with some
+occult power. M. Ginory went on:
+
+"The frame which you had trouble in removing, since the scratches show
+in the wood. And what if, after taking the portrait to Mme. Colard's
+shop, we should find the frame in question at another place, at some
+other shop--that would not be very difficult," and M. Ginory smiled at
+Bernardet. "What if we could add another new deposition to that of Mme.
+Colard's? Yes; what if to that clear, decisive deposition we could add
+another--what would you have to say?"
+
+Silence! Prades turned his head around, his eyes wandered about, as if
+searching to find an outlet or a support; gasping like a man who has
+been injured.
+
+Jacques Dantin looked at him at the same moment when the Magistrate,
+with a glance keener, more piercing than ever, seemed to search his very
+soul. The young man was now pallid and unmanned.
+
+At length Prades pronounced some words. What did he want of him? What
+frame was he talking of? And who was this other dealer of whom the
+Magistrate spoke and whom he had called a second time? Where was this
+witness with "the new deposition?"
+
+"One is enough!" he said, casting a ferocious look at Mme. Colard, who,
+on a sign from M. Ginory, had entered, pale and full of fear.
+
+He added in a menacing tone:
+
+"One is even too much!"
+
+The fingers of his right hand contracted, as if around a knife handle.
+At this moment Bernardet, who was studying each gesture which the man
+made, was convinced that the murderer of Rovere was there. He saw that
+hand armed with the knife, the one which had been found in his pocket,
+striking his victim, gashing the ex-Consul's throat.
+
+But then, "Dantin?" An accomplice, without doubt. The head, of which the
+adventurer was the arm. Because, in the dead man's eye, Dantin's image
+appeared, reflected as clear proof, like an accusation, showing the
+person who was last seen in Rovere's supreme agony. Jacques Dantin was
+there--the eye spoke.
+
+Mme. Colard's testimony no longer permitted M. Ginory to doubt. This
+Charles Prades was certainly the man who sold the portrait.
+
+Nothing could be proved except that the two men had never met. No sign
+of emotion showed that Dantin had ever seen the young man before. The
+latter alone betrayed himself when he was going to Mazas with the
+original of the portrait painted by Baudry.
+
+But, however, as the Magistrate underlined it with precision, the fact
+alone of recognizing Dantin constituted against Prades a new charge.
+Added to the testimony, to the formal affirmation of the shopkeeper,
+this charge became grave.
+
+Coldly, M. Ginory said to his registrar:
+
+"An order!"
+
+Then, when Favarel had taken a paper engraved at the top, which Prades
+tried to decipher, the Magistrate began to question him. And as M.
+Ginory spoke slowly, Favarel filled in the blank places which made a
+free man, a prisoner.
+
+"You are called?" demanded M. Ginory.
+
+"Prades."
+
+"Your first name?"
+
+"Henri."
+
+"You said Charles to the Commissary of Police."
+
+"Henri-Charles--Charles--Henri."
+
+The Magistrate did not even make a sign to Favarel, seated before the
+table, and who wrote very quickly without M. Ginory dictating to him.
+
+"Your profession?" continued the Magistrate.
+
+"Commission merchant."
+
+"Your age?"
+
+"Twenty-eight."
+
+"Your residence?"
+
+"Sydney, Australia."
+
+And, upon this official paper, the replies were filled in, one by one,
+in the blank places:
+
+      COURT OF THE FIRST INSTANCE OF THE DEPARTMENT OF THE SEINE:
+
+     Warrant of Commitment against Prades.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+     Note.--Write exactly the names, Christian names, professions,
+     age, residence and nature of charge.
+
+           *       *       *       *       *
+
+     Description Height metre centimetres
+
+     Forehead Nose
+
+     Eyes Mouth
+
+     Chin Eyebrows
+
+     Hair
+
+     General Appearance
+
+     We, Edme-Armand-Georges Ginory, Examining Magistrate of the
+     Court of the First Instance of the Department of the Seine,
+     command and enjoin all officers and guards of the Public Force
+     to conduct to the Prison of Detention, called the Mazas, in
+     conformity to the Law, Prades (Charles Henri), aged 28 years,
+     Commission Merchant from Sydney. Accused of complicity in the
+     murder of Louis-Pierre Rovere. We direct the Director of said
+     house of detention to receive and hold him till further orders.
+     We command every man in the Public to lend assistance in order
+     to execute the present order, in case such necessity arises, to
+     which we attach our name and seal.
+
+     Made at the Palais de Justice, in Paris, the 12th of February,
+     1896.
+
+And below, the seal was attached to the order by the registrar. M.
+Ginory signed it, saying to Favarel:
+
+"The description must be left blank. They will fill it out after the
+measurements are taken."
+
+Then, Prades, stupefied till now, not seeming to realize half that was
+passing around him, gave a sudden, violent start. A cry burst from him.
+
+"Arrested! Have you arrested me?"
+
+M. Ginory leaned over the table. He was calm and held his pen with which
+he had signed the order, suspended in the air. The young man rushed
+forward wild with anger, and if the guards had not held him back, he
+would have seized M. Ginory's fat neck with both hands. The guards held
+Prades back, while the Examining Magistrate, carelessly pricking the
+table with his pen, gently said, with a smile:
+
+"All the same, more than one malefactor has betrayed himself in a fit of
+anger. I have often thought that it would take very little to get myself
+assassinated, when I had before me an accused person whom I felt was
+guilty and who would not confess. Take away the man!"
+
+While they were pushing Prades toward the corridor he shouted:
+"_Canailles_." M. Ginory ordered that Dantin should be left alone with
+him. "Alone," he said to Bernardet, whose look was a little uneasy. The
+registrar half rose from his chair, picking up his papers and pushing
+them into the pockets of his much worn paper case.
+
+"No; you may remain, Favarel."
+
+"Well," said the Magistrate in a familiar tone, when he found himself
+face to face with Jacques Dantin. "Have you reflected?"
+
+Jacques Dantin, his lips pressed closely together, did not reply.
+
+"It is a counsellor--a counsellor of an especial kind--the cell. He who
+invented it"----
+
+"Yes;" Dantin brusquely interrupted. "The brain suffers between those
+walls. I have not slept since I went there. Not slept at all. Insomnia
+is killing me. It seems as if I should go crazy!"
+
+"Then?" asked M. Ginory.
+
+"Then"----
+
+Jacques Dantin looked fiercely at the registrar, who sat waiting, his
+pen over his ear, his elbows on the table, his chin on his hands.
+
+"Then, oh, well! Then, here it is, I wish to tell you all--all. But to
+you--to you"----
+
+"To me alone?"
+
+"Yes," said Dantin, with the same fierce expression.
+
+"My dear Favarel," the Magistrate began.
+
+The registrar had already risen. He slowly bowed and went out.
+
+"Now," said the Magistrate to Jacques Dantin, "you can speak."
+
+The man still hesitated.
+
+"Monsieur," he asked, "will any word said here be repeated, ought it or
+must it be repeated in a courtroom, at the Assizes, I know not
+where--anywhere before the public?"
+
+"That depends," said M. Ginory. "But what you know you owe to justice,
+whether it be a revelation, an accusation or a confession, I ask it of
+you."
+
+Still Dantin hesitated. Then the Magistrate spoke these words: "I demand
+it!"
+
+With a violent effort the prisoner began. "So be it! But it is to a man
+of honor, rather than to a Magistrate, to whom I address these words. If
+I have hesitated to speak, if I have allowed myself to be suspected and
+to be accused, it is because it seemed to me impossible, absolutely
+impossible, that this same truth should not be revealed--I do not know
+in what way--that it would become known to you without compelling me to
+disclose a secret which was not mine."
+
+"To an Examining Magistrate one may tell everything," said M. Ginory.
+"We have listened to confessions in our offices which are as inviolable
+as those of the confessional made to a priest."
+
+And now, after having accused Dantin of lying, believing that he was
+acting a comedy, after smiling disdainfully at that common invention--a
+vow which one could not break--the perception of a possibility entered
+the Magistrate's mind that this man might be sincere. Hitherto he had
+closed his heart against sympathy for this man; they had met in the
+mutual hostility.
+
+The manner in which Jacques Dantin approached the question, the
+resolution with which he spoke, no longer resembled the obstinate
+attitude which he had before assumed in this same room.
+
+Reflection, the prison--the cell, without doubt--a frightful and
+stifling cell--had done its work. The man who had been excited to the
+point of not speaking now wished to tell all.
+
+"Yes," he said, "since nothing has happened to convince you that I am
+not lying."
+
+"I am listening to you," said the Magistrate.
+
+Then, in a long, close conference, Jacques Dantin told M. Ginory his
+story. He related how, from early youth, he and Rovere had been close
+friends; of the warm affection which had always existed between them; of
+the shams and deceptions of which he had been guilty; of the bitterness
+of his ruined life; of an existence which ought to have been beautiful,
+and which, so useless, the life of a _viveur_, had almost made
+him--why?--how?--through need of money and a lack of moral sense--almost
+descend to crime.
+
+This Rovere, whom he was accused of killing, he loved, and, to tell the
+truth, in that strange and troublous existence which he had lived,
+Rovere had been the only true friend whom he had known. Rovere, a sort
+of pessimistic philosopher, a recluse, lycanthropic, after a life spent
+in feasting, having surfeited himself with pleasure, recognized also in
+his last years that disinterested affection is rare in this world, and
+his savage misanthropy softened before Jacques Dantin's warm
+friendship.
+
+"I continued to search for, in what is called pleasure and what as one's
+hair whitens becomes vice; in play; in the uproar of Paris,
+forgetfulness of life, of the dull life of a man growing old, alone,
+without home or family, an old, stupid fellow, whom the young people
+look at with hate and say to each other: 'Why is he still here?' Rovere,
+more and more, felt the need of withdrawing into solitude, thinking over
+his adventurous life, as bad and as ruined as mine, and he wished to see
+no one. A wolf, a wild boar in his lair! Can you understand this
+friendship between two old fellows, one of whom tried in every way to
+direct his thoughts from himself, and the other, waiting death in a
+corner of his fireside, solitary, unsociable?"
+
+"Perfectly! Go on!"
+
+And the magistrate, with eyes riveted upon Jacques Dantin, saw this man,
+excited, making light of this recital of the past; evoking remembrances
+of forgotten events, of this lost affection; lost, as all his life was.
+
+"This is not a conference; is it not so? You no longer believe that it
+is a comedy? I loved Rovere. Life had often separated us. He searched
+for fortune at the other end of the world. I made a mess of mine and ate
+it in Paris. But we always kept up our relations, and when he returned
+to France we were happy in again seeing each other. The grayer turned
+the hair, the more tender the heart became. I had always found him
+morose--from his twentieth year he always dragged after him a sinister
+companion--ennui. He had chosen a Consular career, to live far away, and
+in a fashion not at all like ours. I have often laughingly said to him
+that he probably had met with unrequited love; that he had experienced
+some unhappy passion. He said, no! I feigned to believe it. One is not
+sombre and melancholy like that without some secret grief. After all,
+there are others who do not feel any gayer with a smile on the lips.
+Sadness is no sign. Neither is gayety!"
+
+His face took on a weary, melancholy expression, which at first
+astonished the Magistrate; then he experienced a feeling of pity; he
+listened, silent and grave.
+
+"I will pass over all the details of our life, shall I not? My monologue
+would be too long. The years of youth passed with a rapidity truly
+astonishing; we come to the time when we found ourselves--he weary of
+life, established in his chosen apartments in the Boulevard de Clichy,
+with his paintings and books; sitting in front of his fire and awaiting
+death--I continuing to spur myself on like a foundered horse. Rovere
+moralized to me; I jeered at his sermons, and I went to sit by his
+fireside and talk over the past. One of his joys had been this portrait
+of me, painted by Paul Baudry. He had hung it up in his salon, at the
+corner of the chimney piece, at the left, and he often said to me:
+
+"'Dost thou know that when thou art not here I talk to it?'
+
+"I was not there very often. Parisian life draws us by its thousand
+attractions. The days which seem interminable when one is twenty rush by
+as if on wings when one is fifty. One has not even time to stop to see
+the friends one loves. At the last moment, if one is right, one ought to
+say, 'How I have cast to the winds everything precious which life has
+given me. How foolish I have been--how stupid.' Pay no attention to my
+philosophisms--the cell! Mazas forces one to think!
+
+"One day--it was one morning--on returning from the club where I had
+passed the night stupidly losing sums which would have given joy to
+hundreds of families, I found on my desk a message from Rovere. If one
+would look through my papers one would find it there--I kept it. Rovere
+begged me to come to him immediately. I shivered--a sharp presentiment
+of death struck me. The writing was trembling, unlike his own. I struck
+my forehead in anger. This message had been waiting for me since the
+night before, while I was spending the hours in gambling. If, when I
+hurried toward the Boulevard de Clichy, I had found Rovere dead on my
+arrival, I could not, believe me, have experienced greater despair. His
+assassination seemed to me atrocious; but I was at least able to assure
+him that his friendship was returned. I hastily read the telegram, threw
+myself into a fiacre, and hastened to his apartments. The woman who
+acted as housekeeper for him, Mme. Moniche, the portress, raising her
+arms as she opened the door for me, said:
+
+"'Ah! Monsieur, but Monsieur has waited for you. He has repeated your
+name all night. He nearly died, but he is better now.'
+
+"Rovere, sitting the night before by his fire, had been stricken by
+lateral paralysis, and as soon as he could hold a pen, in spite of the
+orders of the physician who had been quickly called, had written and
+sent the message to me some hours before.
+
+"As soon as he saw me he--the strong man, the mad misanthrope, silent
+and sombre--held me in his arms and burst into tears. His embrace was
+that of a man who concentrates in one being all that remains of hope.
+
+"'Thou! thou art here!' he said in a low tone. 'If thou knewest!'
+
+"I was moved to the depths of my heart. That manly face, usually so
+energetic, wore an expression of terror which was in some way almost
+childish, a timorous fright. The tears rose in his eyes.
+
+"'Oh! how I have waited for thee! how I have longed for thee!'
+
+"He repeated this phrase with anxious obstinacy. Then he seemed to be
+suffocating. Emotion! The sight of me recalled to him the long agony of
+that night when he thought that he was about to die without parting with
+me for the last time.
+
+"'For what I have to tell thee'----
+
+"He shook his head.
+
+"'It is the secret of my life!'
+
+"He was lying on a sort of sick chair or lounge, in the library where he
+passed his last days with his books. He made me sit down beside him. He
+took my hand and said:
+
+"'I am going to die. I believed that the end had come last night. I
+called thee. Oh, well, if I had died there is one being in the world who
+would not have had the fortune which--I have'----
+
+"He lowered his voice as if he thought we were spied upon, as if some
+one could hear.
+
+"'I have a daughter. Yes, even from thee I have hidden this secret,
+which tortures me. A daughter who loves me and who has not the right to
+confess this tenderness, no more than I have the right to give her my
+name. Ah! our youth, sad youth! I might have had a home to-day, a
+fireside of my own, a dear one near me, and instead of that, an
+affection of which I am ashamed and which I have hidden even from thee,
+Jacques, from thee, dost thou comprehend?'
+
+"I remember each of Rovere's words as if I was hearing them now. This
+conversation with my poor friend is among the most poignant yet most
+precious of my remembrances. With much emotion, which distressed me, the
+poor man revealed to me the secret which he had believed it his duty to
+hide from me so many years, and I vowed to him--I swore to him on my
+honor, and that is why I hesitated to speak, or rather refused to speak,
+not wishing to compromise any one, neither the dead nor living--I swore
+to him, Monsieur le Juge, to repeat nothing of what he told me to any
+one, to any one but to her"----
+
+"Her?" interrogated M. Ginory.
+
+"His daughter," Dantin replied.
+
+The Examining Magistrate recalled that visitor in black, who had been
+seen occasionally at Rovere's apartments, and the little romance of
+which Paul Rodier had written in his paper--the romance of the Woman in
+Black!
+
+"And this daughter?"
+
+"She bears," said Dantin, with a discouraged gesture, "the name of the
+father which the law gives her, and this name is a great name, an
+illustrious name, that of a retired general officer, living in one of
+the provinces, a widower, and who adores the girl who is another man's
+child. The mother is dead. The father has never known. When dying, the
+mother revealed the secret to her daughter. She came, by command of the
+dead, to see Rovere, but as a Sister of Charity, faithful to the name
+which she bears. She does not wish to marry; she will never leave the
+crippled old soldier who calls her his daughter, and who adores her."
+
+"Oh!" said M. Ginory, remaining mute a moment before this very simple
+drama, and in which, in that moment of reflection, he comprehended, he
+analyzed, nearly all of the hidden griefs, the secret tears, the stifled
+sobs, the stolen kisses. "And that is why you kept silent?" he asked.
+
+"Yes, Monsieur. Oh! but I could not endure the torture any longer, and
+not seeing the expected release any nearer, I would have spoken, I would
+have spoken to escape that cell, that sense of suffocation, I endured
+there. It seemed to me, however, that I owed it to my dead friend not to
+reveal his secret to any one, not even to you. I shall never forget
+Rovere's joy, when relieved of the burden, by the confidence which he
+had reposed in me, he said to me, that now that she who was his
+daughter, and was poor, living at Blois only on the pension of a retired
+officer to whom she had appointed herself nurse, knowing that she was
+not his daughter, this innocent child, who was paying with a life of
+devotion for the sins of two guilty ones, would at least have happiness
+at last.
+
+"She is young, and the one for whom she cares cannot live always. My
+fortune will give her a dowry. And then!"
+
+"It was to me to whom he confided this fortune. He had very little money
+with his notary. Erratic and distrustful, Rovere kept his valuables in
+his safe, as he kept his books in his library. It seemed that he was a
+collector, picking up all kinds of things. Avaricious? No; but he wished
+to have about him, under his hand, everything which belonged to him. He
+possibly may have wished to give what he had directly to the one to whom
+it seemed good to him to give it, and confide it to me in trust.
+
+"I regret not having asked him directly that day what he counted on
+doing with his fortune and how he intended enriching his child, whom he
+had not the right to recognize. I dared, or, rather, I did not think of
+it. I experienced a strong emotion when I saw my friend enfeebled and
+almost dying. I had known him so different, so handsome. Oh! those poor,
+sad, restless eyes, that lowered voice, as if he feared an enemy was
+listening! Illness had quickly, brutally changed that vigorous man,
+suddenly old and timorous.
+
+"I went away from that first interview much distressed, carrying a
+secret which seemed to me a heavy and cruel one; and which made me think
+of the uselessness, the wickedness, the vain loves of a ruined life. But
+I felt that Rovere owed truly his fortune to that girl who, the next
+day after the death of the one whom she had piously attended, found
+herself poor and isolated in a little house in a steep street, near the
+Chateau, above Blois. I felt that, whatever this unknown father left,
+ought not to go to distant relatives, who cared nothing for him; did not
+even know him; were ignorant of his sufferings and perhaps even of his
+existence, and who by law would inherit.
+
+"A dying man, yes! There could be no question about it, and Dr.
+Vilandry, whom I begged to accompany me to see my friend, did not hide
+it from me. Rovere was dying of a kidney difficulty, which had made
+rapid progress.
+
+"It was necessary, then, since he was not alone in the world, that he
+should think of the one of whom he had spoken and whom he loved.
+
+"'For I love her, that child whom I have no right to name. I love her!
+She is good, tender, admirable. If I did not see that she resembled
+me--for she does resemble me--I should tell thee that she was beautiful.
+I would be proud to cry aloud: "This is my daughter!" To promenade with
+her on my arm--and I must hide this secret from all the world. That is
+my torture! And it is the chastisement of all that has not been right in
+my life. Ah! sad, unhappy loves!' That same malediction for the past
+came to his lips as it had come to his thoughts. The old workman,
+burdened with labor throughout the week, who could promenade on the
+Boulevard de Clichy on Sunday, with his daughter on his arm, was happier
+than Rovere. And--a strange thing, sentiment of shame and
+remorse--feeling himself traveling fast to his last resting-place in the
+cemetery, he expressed no wish to see that child, to send for her to
+come from Blois under some pretext or other, easy enough to find.
+
+"No, he experienced a fierce desire for solitude, he shrunk from an
+interview, in which he feared all his grief would rush to his lips in a
+torrent of words. He feared for himself, for his weakness, for the
+strange feeling he experienced in his head.
+
+"'It seems as if it oscillated upon my shoulders,' he said. 'If Marthe
+came (and he repeated the name as a child would have pronounced it who
+was just learning to name the letters of a word) I would give her but
+the sad spectacle of a broken-down man, and leave on her mind only the
+impression of a human ruin. And then--and then--not to see her! not to
+have the right to see her! that is all right--it is my chastisement!'
+
+"Let it be so! I understood. I feared that an interview would be mortal.
+He had been so terribly agitated when he had sent for me that other
+time.
+
+"But I, at least, wished to recall to him his former wish which he had
+expressed of providing for the girl's future. I desired that he should
+make up for the past, since money is one of the forms of reparation. But
+I dared not speak to him again in regard to it, or of that trust of
+which he had spoken.
+
+"He said to me, this strong man whom Death had never frightened, and
+whom he had braved many times, he said to me now, weakened by this
+illness which was killing him hour by hour:
+
+"If I knew that my end was near I would decide--but I have time."
+
+"Time! Each day brought him a little nearer to that life about which I
+feared to say to him: 'The time has come!' The fear, in urging him to a
+last resolution, of seeming like an executioner whose presence seemed to
+say: 'To-day is the day!' prevented me. You understand, Monsieur? And
+why not? I ought to wait no longer. Rovere's confidence had made of me a
+second Rovere who possessed the strength and force of will which the
+first one now lacked. I felt that I held in my hands, so to speak,
+Marthe's fate. I did not know her, but I looked upon her as a martyr in
+her vocation of nurse to the old paralytic to whom she was paying, in
+love, the debt of the dead wife. I said to myself: 'It is to me, to me
+alone, that Rovere must give instructions of what he wishes to leave to
+his daughter, and it is for me to urge him to do this, it is for me to
+brace his weakened will! I was resolved! It was a duty! Each day the
+unhappy man's strength failed. I saw it--this human ruin! One morning,
+when I went to his apartments, I found him in a singular state of
+terror. He related me a story, I knew not what, of a thief, whose victim
+he was; the lock of his door had been forced, his safe opened. Then,
+suddenly, interrupting himself, he began to laugh, a feeble laugh, which
+made me ill.
+
+"'I am a fool,' he said. 'I am dreaming, awake--I continue in the
+daytime the nightmares of the night--a thief here! No one has come--Mme.
+Moniche has watched--but my head is so weak, so weak! I have known so
+many rascals in my life! Rascals always return, _hein!_'
+
+"He made a sad attempt at a laugh.
+
+"It was delirium! A delirium which soon passed away, but which
+frightened me. It returned with increased force each day, and at shorter
+intervals.
+
+"Well, I said to myself, during a lucid interview, 'he must do what he
+has resolved to do, what he had willed to do--what he wishes to do!' And
+I decided--it was the night before the assassination--to bring him to
+the point, to aid his hesitation. I found him calmer that day. He was
+lying on his lounge, enveloped in his dressing gown, with a traveling
+rug thrown across his thin legs. With his black skull-cap and his
+grayish beard he looked like a dying Doge.
+
+"He held out his bony hand to me, giving me a sad smile, and said that
+he felt better. A period of remission in his disease, a feeling of
+comfort pervading his general condition.
+
+"'What if I should recover?' he said, looking me full in the face.
+
+"I comprehended by that ardent look, which was of singular vitality,
+that this man, who had never feared death, still clung to life. It was
+instinct.
+
+"I replied that certainly he might, and I even said that he would surely
+recover, but--with what grievous repugnance did I approach the
+subject--I asked him if, experiencing the general feeling of ease and
+comfort which pervaded his being, whether he would not be even more
+comfortable and happy if he thought of what he ought to do for that
+child of whom he had spoken, and for whose future he wished to provide.
+
+"'And since thou art feeling better, my dear Rovere, it is perhaps the
+opportunity to put everything in order in that life which thou art about
+to recover, and which will be a new life.'
+
+"He looked fixedly at me with his beautiful eyes. It was a profound
+regard, and I saw that he divined my thought.
+
+"'Thou art right!' he said firmly; 'no weakness.'
+
+"Then, gathering all his forces, he arose, stood upright, refusing even
+the arm which I held out to him, and in his dressing gown, which hung
+about him, he seemed to me taller, thinner, even handsomer. He took two
+or three steps, at first a little unsteady, then, straightening up, he
+walked directly to his safe, turned the letters, and opened it, after
+having smiled, and said:
+
+"'I had forgotten the word--four letters; it is, however, a little
+thing. My head is empty.'
+
+"Then, the safe opened, he took out papers--of value, without
+doubt--papers which he took back to his lounge, spread out on a table
+near at hand, and said:
+
+"'Let us see! This which I am going to give thee is for her----A will,
+yes, I could make a will----but it would create talk----it would be
+asked what I had done----it would be searched out, dug out of the past,
+it would open a tomb----I cannot!----What I have shall be hers, thou
+wilt give it to her--thou'----
+
+"And his large, haggard eyes searched through the papers.
+
+"'Ah! here!' he said; 'here are some bonds! Egyptian--of a certain value
+to the holder, at 3 per cent. I hid that--where did I put it?'
+
+"He picked up the papers, turned them over and over, became alarmed,
+turned pale.
+
+"'But,' I said to him, 'is it not among those papers?'
+
+"He shrugged his shoulders, displayed with an ironical smile the
+engraved papers.
+
+"'Some certificates of decorations! The bric-a-brac of a Consular life.'
+
+"Then with renewed energy he again went to the safe, opened the till,
+pulled it out, and searched again and again.
+
+"Overcome with fright, he exclaimed: 'It is not there!'
+
+"'Why is it not there?'
+
+"And he gave me another look--haggard! terrible! His face was fearfully
+contracted. He clasped his head with both hands, and stammered, as if
+coming out of a dream.
+
+"'It is true, I remember--I have hidden it! Yes, I hid it! I do not know
+where--in some book! In which one?'
+
+"He looked around him with wild eyes. The cerebral anaemia which had made
+him fear robbery again seized him, and poor Rovere, my old friend,
+plainly showed that he was enduring the agony of a man who is drowning,
+and who does not know where to cling in order to save himself.
+
+"He was still standing, but as he turned around, he staggered.
+
+"He repeated in a hoarse, frightened voice: 'Where, where have I hidden
+that? Fool! The safe did not seem to me secure enough! Where, where
+have I put it?'
+
+"It was then, Monsieur, yes, at that moment, that the concierge entered
+and saw us standing face to face before those papers of which she had
+spoken. I must have looked greatly embarrassed, very pale, showing the
+violent emotion which seized me by the throat. Rovere said to her rather
+roughly: 'What are you here for?' and sent her away with a gesture. Mme.
+Moniche had had time to see the open safe and the papers spread out,
+which she supposed were valuable. I understand how she deceived herself,
+and when I think of it, I accuse myself. There was something tragic
+taking place between Rovere and me. This woman could not know what it
+was, but she felt it.
+
+"And it was more terrible, a hundred times more terrible, when she had
+disappeared. There seemed to be a battle raging in Rovere's brain, as
+between his will and his weakness. Standing upright, striving not to
+give way, struggling to concentrate all his brain power in his effort to
+remember, to find some trace of the hidden place where he had foolishly
+put his fortune, between the leaves of some huge book. Rovere called
+violently, ardently to his aid his last remnant of strength to combat
+against this anaemia which took away the memory of what he had done. He
+rolled his eyes desperately, found nothing, remembered nothing.
+
+"It was awful--this combat against memory, which disappeared, fled; this
+aspect of a panting beast, a hunted boar which seemed to seize this
+man--and I shivered when, with a rage, I shall never forget, the dying
+man rushed, in two steps, to the table, bent over the papers, snatched
+them up with his thin hands, crumpled them up, tore them in two and
+threw them under his feet, with an almost maniacal laugh, saying in
+strident tones:
+
+"'Ah! Decorations! Brevets, baubles! Childish foolishness! What good are
+they? Would they give her a living?'
+
+"And he kept on laughing. He excited himself over the papers, which he
+stamped under his feet until he had completely exhausted himself. He
+gasped, 'I stifle!' and he half fell over the lounge, upon which I laid
+him. I fully believed that he was dying. I experienced a horrible
+sensation, which was agonizing. He revived, however. But how, after that
+swoon and that crisis, could I speak to him again of his daughter, of
+that which he wished to leave her, to give, in trust, to me? He became
+preoccupied with childish things, returning to the dreams of a rich man;
+he spoke of going out the next day. We would go together in the Bois. We
+would dine at the Pavilion. He would like to travel. And thus he rambled
+on.
+
+"I said to myself, 'Wait! Let us wait! To-morrow, after a good night's
+sleep, he will perhaps remember. I surely have some days before me. To
+speak to him to-day would be to provoke a new crisis.'
+
+"And I helped him to put back in the safe the crushed, torn papers,
+without his asking me, or even himself questioning how they had come
+there, who had thrown them on the floor, or who had opened the safe. His
+face wore a slight smile, his gestures were automatic. Very weary, he at
+last said:
+
+"'I am very tired. I would like to sleep.' I left him. He had stretched
+himself out and covered himself up. He closed his eyes and said:
+
+"'It is so good to sleep!'
+
+"I would see him to-morrow. I would try to again to-morrow awaken in him
+the desire which now seemed dulled. To-morrow his memory would have
+returned, and in some of his books where he had (like the Arabs who put
+their harvests in silos) placed his treasure he would find the fortune
+intended for his daughter.
+
+"To-morrow! It is the word one repeats most often, and which one has the
+least right to use.
+
+"I saw Rovere only after he was dead, with his throat cut--assassinated
+by whom? The man whom you have arrested has traveled much; he comes from
+a distance. Rovere was Consul at Buenos Ayres, and you know that he said
+to me the last day I saw him: 'I have known many rascals in my life!'
+Which seemed very simple when one thinks of the way he had lived.
+
+"This is the truth, Monsieur. I ought to have told you sooner. I repeat
+that I had the weakness of wishing to keep the vow given to my dead
+friend. I had the name of a woman to betray, the name of a man, too;
+innocent of Rovere's fault. And then, again, it seemed to me that this
+truth ought to become known of itself. When I was arrested, a sort of
+foolish bravado urged me to see how far the absurdity of the charge
+could accumulate against me seeming proofs. I am a gambler. That was a
+part I played against you, or rather against the foolishness of destiny.
+I did not take a second thought that the error could be a lasting one. I
+had, moreover, only a word to say, but this word, I repeat, I hesitated
+to speak, and I willingly supported the consequence of this hesitation,
+even because this word was a name."
+
+"That name," said M. Ginory, "I have not asked you."
+
+"I refused it to the Magistrate," said Jacques Dantin, "but I confide it
+to the man of honor!"
+
+"There is only a Magistrate here," M. Ginory replied, "but the legal
+inquiry has its secrets, as life has."
+
+And Jacques Dantin gave the name which the one whom Louis-Pierre Rovere
+called, Marthe, bore as her rightful name.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+M. GINORY, M. Leriche, the chief; Bernardet, and, in fact, all the
+judiciary, believed that Charles Prades was guilty of the murder of
+Rovere. Bernardet, who had been an actor in this drama, had now become a
+spectator.
+
+Paul Rodier, a good reporter, had learned before his confreres of the
+arrest of the young man, and, abandoning what he had called his trail of
+the Woman in Black, he abruptly whirled about and quickly invented a
+sensational biography of the newcomer. Charles-Henri Prades, or rather
+Carlos Prades, as he called himself, had been a _gaucho_, a buffalo
+tamer, a cowboy, using, turn by turn, the American revolver against the
+Redskins and the Mexican lasso against the Yankees.
+
+The journalist had obtained a signature, picked up by the lodging-house
+keeper where the guilty man had been hunted down, and published in his
+paper the autographic characters; he had deduced from them some dramatic
+observations. Cooper, of former times; Gustave Aymard, of yesterday;
+Rudyard Kipling or Bret Harte, of to-day, had never met a personage more
+dreadful, and at the same time more heroic. Carlos Prades used the
+navaja (Spanish knife) with the terrible rapidity of a Catalan. He had
+felt since the days of Buenos Ayres a fierce hate for the ex-Consul, and
+this crime, which some of his brother reporters, habitually
+indifferently informed (it was Paul Rodier who spoke), now attributed
+alone to the avarice of this Cambrioleur from over the sea; he, Rodier,
+gave this note as the cause of vengeance, and built thereupon a romance
+which made his readers shiver. Or, rather, he said nothing outright. He
+permitted one a glimpse into, he outlined, one knows not what, dark
+history. Soon he made this Carlos Prades the instrument and the arm of
+an association of vengeance. He could even believe that there was
+anarchy in the affair. Then he had the young man mixed in some love
+affair, a drama of passion, with Argentine Republic for the theatre.
+
+As a result he had succeeded in making interesting the man whom
+Bernardet had pushed a few nights before into the station house.
+
+And, what was a singular thing, the reporter had divined part of the
+truth. It was still another episode in his past that Rovere expiated
+when he found himself one day, in his salon in the Boulevard de Clichy,
+face to face with the man who was to be his murderer. At Buenos Ayres,
+the ex-Consul had been associated in a large agricultural enterprise
+with a man whose hazardous speculations, play and various adventures had
+completely ruined him, and who had left two children--a young girl whom
+Rovere thought for a moment of marrying, and a son, younger--poor beings
+of whom the Consul, paying his partner's debts, seemed the natural
+protector. Jean Prades, in committing suicide--he had killed himself,
+frightened at the magnitude of his debts--had commended his children to
+Rovere's care.
+
+If Carlotta had lived, without doubt Rovere would have made her his
+wife. He loved her with a deep and respectful tenderness. The poor girl
+died very suddenly, and there remained to Rovere only his dream. One of
+those remembrances of a fireside, one of those spectres which brush the
+forehead with their wings or the folds of their winding sheets, when in
+the solitude in which he has voluntarily buried himself the searcher
+after adventures recalls the past. The past of yesterday. Illusions,
+disillusions, old loves, miseries!
+
+Rovere gave to this brother of the dead girl the affection which he had
+felt for her. He remembered, also, the father's request. Prades's son,
+passionate, eager to live, tempted in all his appetites, accepted as his
+due Rovere's truly paternal devotion, worked on the sympathy of this
+man, who, through pity and duty, too, gave to Charles a little of the
+affection which he had felt for the sister, almost his fiancee, and for
+the father, dead by his own hand.
+
+But, little by little, the solicitations, the unreasonable demands of
+Prades, who, believing that he had a just claim on his father's old
+partner, found it very natural that Rovere should devote himself to
+him--these continual and pressing demands became for the Consul
+irritating obsessions. Rovere seemed to this young man, who was a
+spendthrift and a gambler--a gambler possessed with atavistic frenzy--a
+sort of living savings bank, from which he could draw without counting.
+His importunities at last seemed fatiguing and excessive, and Prades was
+advised one beautiful day that he no longer need count from that moment
+on the generosity of his benefactor. All this happened at Buenos Ayres,
+and about the time of the Consul's departure for France. Rovere added to
+this very curt declaration a last benefit. He gave to the brother of the
+dead girl, to the son of Prades, of the firm of Rovere and Prades, a sum
+sufficient to enable him to live while waiting for better things, and he
+told the young man in proper terms that, as he had now no one to depend
+upon, that he had better take himself elsewhere to be hung. The word
+could not be, with the appetites and habits of Charles Prades, taken in
+a figurative sense, and the young man continued his life of adventures,
+as tragic in their reality and as improbable as the reporters'
+melodramatic inventions.
+
+Then, at the end of his resources, after having searched for fortune
+among miners, weary of tramping about in America, he embarked one
+morning for Havre, with the idea that the best gold mine was still that
+living placer which he had exploited in Buenos Ayres, and which was
+called Pierre Rovere.
+
+At Paris, where he knew the Consul had retired, Prades soon found trace
+of him, and learned where was the retreat of his brother-in-law. His
+brother-in-law! He pronounced the word with a wicked sneer, as if it had
+for him a something understood about the sweet and maiden remembrance of
+the dead girl. There, in gay Paris, with some resources which allowed
+him to pay for his board and lodging in a third-rate hotel, he searched,
+asked, discovered, at last, the address of the ex-Consul, and presented
+himself to Rovere, who felt, at sight of this spectre, his anger return.
+
+The first time that Charles Prades had asked at the lodge if M. Rovere
+was at home, the Moniches had permitted him to go upstairs, and perhaps
+Mme. Moniche would have suspected the man in the sombrero if she had not
+surprised Jacques Dantin before the open safe and the papers.
+
+Prades, moreover, had appeared only three times at Rovere's house, and
+on the day of the murder he had entered at the moment when Mme. Moniche
+was sweeping the upper floors, and Moniche was working in his shop in
+the rear of the lodge, and the staircase was empty. He rang, and
+Rovere, with dragging steps, came to open the door. Rovere was ill and
+was a little ennuied, and he believed, or instinctively hoped, that it
+was the woman in black--his daughter!
+
+Everything served Prades's projects. He had come not to kill, but by
+some means to gain entrance to Rovere's apartments, and, when once
+there, to find some resource--a loan, more or less freely given, more or
+less forced--and he would leave with it.
+
+Rovere, already worn out, weary of his former supplications, felt
+tempted to shut the door in his face, but Prades pushed it back,
+entered, closed it, and said:
+
+"A last interview! You will never see me again! But listen to me!"
+
+Then, Rovere allowed him to enter the salon, and despite the terrible
+weakness which he experienced wished to make this a final, decisive
+interview; to disembarrass himself once for all of this everlasting
+beggar, sometimes whining, sometimes threatening.
+
+"Will you not let me die in peace?" he said. "Have I not paid my debt?"
+
+But Prades had seated himself in a fauteuil, crossed his legs and hung
+over his knee his sombrero, on which he drummed a minstrel march.
+
+"My dear Monsieur Rovere, it is a last appeal for funds. I believe that
+America is better than Paris. And in order to return there or to do
+what I ought here, I must have what I have not--money!"
+
+"I am tired of giving you money!" Rovere quickly replied.
+
+And between these two men, bound by the remembrance of the dead girl--a
+bond burdensome to the one, imposed upon by the other--a storm of bitter
+words and harsh sentiments arose and kindled fierce anger in both.
+
+"I tried to let you remain in peace, my dear Consul. But hunger has
+driven the wolf out of the woods. I am very hungry. And here I am!"
+
+"I have nothing with which to feed your appetites. You are nothing but a
+burden to me."
+
+"Oh! Ingratitude!" and Prades, with his Argentine accent, spoke his
+sister's name.
+
+"My father died and Carlotta herself entrusted me to your care, my dear
+brother-in-law!"
+
+It seemed to the sick man, irritated as he was, that this name--which he
+had buried deep in his heart with chaste tenderness--was a supreme
+insult.
+
+"I forbid you to evoke that memory! You do not see, then, that the
+memory of that dear and saintly creature is one of the griefs of my
+life!"
+
+"And it is one of my heritages! Brother-in-law of a consul, _Senor mia_,
+but it is a title, and I hold it!"
+
+Rovere experienced a strong desire to call, to ring, to give an order to
+have this troublesome visitor put out. But energetic and fearless as he
+had been but a short time before, now weakened by illness, he trembled
+before a possible scandal. Then he, unaided, attempted to push the young
+man out of the salon. Prades resisted, and, at the first touch, gave a
+bound, and all that was evil in him suddenly awoke.
+
+A struggle ensued, without a word being pronounced by either; a quick,
+brutal struggle. Rovere counted on his past strength, taking by the
+collar this Prades who threatened him, and Prades, while clutching the
+ex-Consul with his left hand, searched in his pocket for a weapon--the
+one which Bernardet had taken from him.
+
+This was a sinister moment! Prades pushed Rovere back; he staggered and
+fell against a piece of furniture, while the young man disengaging
+himself, stepped back, quickly opened his Spanish knife, then, with a
+bound, caught Rovere, shook him, and holding the knife uplifted, said:
+
+"Thou hast willed it!"
+
+It was at this instant that Rovere, whose hands were contracted, dug his
+nails into the assassin's neck--the nails which the Commissary Desbriere
+and M. Jacquelin Audrays had found still red with blood.
+
+Prades, who had come there either to supplicate or threaten, now had
+only one thought, hideous and ferocious--to kill! He did not reason. It
+was no more than an unchained instinct. The noise of the organs upon the
+Boulevard, which accompanied with their musical, dragging notes this
+savage scene, like a tremulo undertone to a melodrama at the theatre, he
+did not hear. The whole intensity of his life seemed to be concentrated
+in his fury, in his hand armed with the knife. He threw himself on
+Rovere; he struck the flesh, opening the throat, as across the water
+among the Gauchos he had been accustomed to kill sheep or cut the throat
+of an ox.
+
+Rovere staggered, wavered, freed from the hand which held him, and
+Prades stepping back, looked at him.
+
+Livid, the dying man seemed to live only in his eyes. He had cast upon
+the murderer a last meaning look--now, in a sort of supreme agony, he
+looked around, his eyes searched for a support, for aid, yes, they
+called, while from that throat horrible sounds issued.
+
+Prades saw with a kind of fright, Rovere, with a superhuman tragic
+effort, step back, staggering like a drunken man, pull with his poor
+contracted hands from above the chimney piece an object which the
+murderer had not noticed and upon which, with an ardent, prayerful
+expression he fixed his eyes, stammering some quick inarticulate words
+which Prades could not hear or understand.
+
+It seemed to Prades that between his victim and himself there was a
+witness, and whether he thought of the value of the stones imbedded in
+the frame or whether he wished to take from Rovere this last support in
+his distress, he went to him and attempted to tear the portrait from his
+hands. But an extraordinary strength seemed to come to the dying man and
+Rovere resisted, fastening his eyes upon the portrait, casting upon it a
+living flame, like the last flare of a dying lamp, and with this last,
+despairing, agonizing look the ex-Consul breathed his last. He fell.
+Prades tore the portrait from the fingers which clutched it. That frame,
+he could sell it. He picked up here and there some pieces which seemed
+to him of value, as if on a pillaging tour on the prairies. He was about
+to enter the library where the safe was, when the noise of the opening
+of the entrance door awakened his trapper's instinct. Some one was
+coming. Who it could be was of little importance. To remain was to
+expose himself, to be at once arrested. The corpse once seen, the person
+would cry aloud, rush out, close the door and send for the police.
+
+Hesitating between a desire to pillage and the necessity for fright,
+Prades did not wait long to decide. Should he hide? Impossible! Then,
+stepping back to the salon door, he flattened himself as much as
+possible against the wall and waited until the door should be opened
+when he would be completely hidden behind it. As Mme. Moniche stepped
+into the room and cried out as she saw Rovere lying on the floor, Prades
+slipped into the ante-chamber, found himself on the landing, closed the
+door, rapidly descended the stairs and stepped out upon the Boulevard de
+Clichy among the passers-by, even before Mme. Moniche, terrified, had
+called for help.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+ALL the details of that murder, M. Ginory had drawn, one by one, from
+Prades in his examination. The murderer denied at first; hesitated;
+discussed; then at last, like a cask with the bung out, from which pours
+not wine, but blood, the prisoner told all; confessed; recounted;
+loosened his tongue; abandoned himself weakened and conquered, weary of
+his misery.
+
+"I was so foolish, so stupid," he violently said, "as to keep the
+portrait. I believed that the frame was worth a fortune. Fool! I sold it
+for a hundred sous!"
+
+He gave the merchant's address, it was on the Quai Saint Michel.
+Bernardet found the frame as he had found the painted panel, and this
+time, no great credit was due him.
+
+"Now," said he, "the affair is ended, _classe_. My children (he was
+relating his adventures to his little girls), we must pass to another.
+And why"--
+
+"Why, what?" asked Mme. Bernardet.
+
+"Eh! there it is! Why--it lacks the elucidation of a problem. I will
+see! I will know!"
+
+He still remembered the young Danish doctor, whom he had seen with M.
+Morin at the autopsy. With his knowledge of men, with the sharp, keen
+eye of the police officer, Bernardet had recognized a man of superior
+mind; a mind dreamy and mysterious. He knew where Dr. Erwin lived during
+his sojourn in Paris, and he went to his apartment one beautiful morning
+and rang the bell at the door of a hotel in the Boulevard Saint Martin,
+where students and strangers lodge. He might have asked advice of M.
+Morin, of the master of French Science, but he, the Inspector of Surete,
+approach these high personages, to question them. He dared not as long
+as there was a Danish doctor.
+
+Bernardet's brain whirled. He felt almost certain that Dr. Erwin would
+give the same explanation which he, himself, suspected, in regard to the
+observed phenomenon.
+
+"The dead man's eye has spoken and can speak," said Bernardet to
+himself. "Yes, surely. I am not deceived."
+
+Dr. Erwin met Bernardet cordially and listened to him with profound
+attention. The police officer repeated word for word the confession
+drawn from Prades. Then he asked the Danish physician if he really
+believed that Jacques Dantin's image had been transfixed on the retina
+of the dying man's eye, during the time when he had held and gazed at
+the portrait.
+
+"For the proofs which I obtained were very confused," said the officer,
+"it is possible, and I say it is quite easy to recognize Jacques
+Dantin's features. We have seen it, and, according to your opinion even
+the painting was able to be--how shall I express myself--stored up,
+retained in the retina."
+
+"You found the proof there," said Dr. Erwin.
+
+"So, according to your opinion, I have not deceived myself?"
+
+"No!"
+
+"I have truly found in the retina of the dead man's eye the last vision
+he saw when living?"
+
+"Yes!"
+
+"But the vision of a painting. A painting, Doctor."
+
+"Why not!" Dr. Erwin responded in a sharp tone. "Do you know what
+happened? Knowing that he was dying the unhappy man went, urged by a
+tragic impulse, to that portrait which represented to him all that was
+left, concentrating in one image alone, all his life."
+
+"Then it is possible? It is possible?" Bernardet repeated.
+
+"I believe it," said the Dane. "The man is dying. He has only one
+thought--to go directly to the one who, surviving him, guarded his
+secrets and his life. He seized his portrait; he tore it from its hook
+with all his strength; he devoured it with his eyes; he drank it in with
+a look, if I may be allowed the expression. To this picture of the being
+whom he loved he spoke; he cried to him; telling him his last wishes;
+dictating to him his thoughts of vengeance. At this supreme moment his
+energy was increased a hundredfold, I know not what intensity of life
+was concentrated on this image, and gathering all his failing forces in
+a last look the man who wished to live; the man weakened by illness,
+dying, assassinated, put into that last regard the electric force, the
+fire which fixed the image (confused, no doubt, but recognizable since
+you have traced the resemblance) upon the retina. A phantom, if you
+wish, which is reflected in the dead man's eye."
+
+"And," repeated Bernardet, who wished to be perfectly assured in regard
+to the question, "it is not only the image of a living being, it is, to
+use your words, the phantom even of a painting which was retained on the
+retina?"
+
+"I do not reply to you: 'That is possible!' It is you who say to me: 'I
+have seen it!' And you have seen it, in truth, and the form, vague
+though it may be, the painted figure permits you to find in a passer-by
+the man whose picture the retina had already shown you!"
+
+"Oh! well! Doctor," said the little Bernardet, "I shall tell that, but
+they will deny it. They will say that it is impossible!"
+
+Dr. Erwin smiled. He seemed to be looking, with his deep blue eyes, at
+some invisible perspective, not bounded by the rooms of little room.
+
+"One has said," he began, "that the word _impossible_ is not French. It
+would be more exact to affirm that it was not _human_! We attain a
+knowledge of the unknowable. The mysterious is approachable. One must
+deny nothing _a priori_; one must believe all things possible and not
+only a dream. Search for the truth, the _harsh_ truth, as your Stendhal
+said. Well! the word is wrong. One ought to say justly, the _exquisite_
+truth, for it is a joy for those who search, that daily life where each
+movement marks a step advanced, where the heart beats at the thought of
+a rendezvous in the laboratory as at a rendezvous of love. Ah! he is
+happy who has given his life to science. He lives in a dream. It is the
+poetry, in our times of prose. The dream," continued the young doctor as
+in an ecstasy, while Bernardet listened, ravished, "the dream is
+everywhere. It is impossible to make it tangible. Thought, human
+thought, can sometime be deciphered like an open book. An American
+physician asked to be permitted to try an experiment upon the cranium of
+a condemned man, still living. Through the cranium he studied the man's
+brain. Has not Edison undertaken to give sight to the blind! But, in
+order to accomplish all these things, it is necessary, as in primitive
+times, to believe, to believe always. The twentieth century will see
+many others."
+
+"Ah! Doctor! Doctor!" cried poor little Bernardet, much moved. "I do not
+wish to be the ignoramus that I am, the father of a family, who has
+mouths to feed, and I beg of you to take me as a sweeper in your
+laboratory."
+
+He departed, enthused by the interview. Henceforth he could say that,
+he, the ignorant one, had, by his seemingly foolish conviction, proved
+the leader of an experiment which had been abandoned for some years; and
+the humble police officer had reopened the nearly closed door to
+criminal instruction.
+
+A scruple, moreover, came to him; a doubt, an agony, and he wished to
+share it with M. Ginory.
+
+All the same, with the admirable invention, he had caused an innocent
+man to be arrested. This thought made him very uneasy. He had produced a
+power which, instead of striking the guilty, had overthrown an unhappy
+man, and it was this famous discovery of Dr. Bourion's, persisted in by
+him, which had resulted in this mistake.
+
+"It must be," he thought, "that man may be fallible even in the most
+marvelous discoveries. It is frightful! It is perhaps done to make us
+more prudent. Prudent and modest!"
+
+Doubt now seized him. Must he stop there in these famous experiments
+which ended in this lie? Ought he abandon all research on a road which
+ended in a cul-de-sac? And he confided that unhappy scruple to the
+Examining Magistrate, with whom the chances of the service had put him
+in sympathy. M. Ginory not only was interested in strange discoveries,
+but he was always indulgent toward the original, little Bernardet.
+
+"Finally, M. le Juge," said the police officer, shaking his head, "I
+have thought and thought about the discovery, our discovery--that of Dr.
+Bourion. It is subject to errors, our discovery. It would have led us to
+put in prison--Jacques Dantin, and Jacques Dantin was not guilty."
+
+"Oh, yes! M. Bernardet," said the Magistrate, who seemed thoughtful, his
+heavy chin resting on his hand. "It ought to make us modest. It is the
+fate of all human discoveries. To err--to err, is human!"
+
+"It is not the less true," responded Bernardet, "that all which has
+passed opens to us the astonishing horizon of the unknown"----
+
+"The unknowable!" murmured the Magistrate.
+
+"A physician who sometimes asks me to his experiments invited me to his
+house the other evening and I saw--yes saw, or what one calls seeing, in
+a mirror placed before me, by the light of the X-rays--greenish rays
+which traversed the body--yes, Monsieur, I saw my heart beat, and my
+lungs perform their functions, and I am fat, and a thin person could
+better see himself living and breathing. Is it not fantastic, Monsieur
+Ginory? Would not a man have been shut up as a lunatic thirty years ago
+who would have pretended that he had discovered that? We shall see--we
+shall see many others!"
+
+"And will it add to the happiness of man? and will it diminish grief,
+wickedness and crime?"
+
+The Magistrate spoke as if to himself, thoughtfully, sadly. Something
+Bernardet said brought a smile to his lips.
+
+"This is, Monsieur le Juge, a fine ending of the chapter for the second
+part of your work, 'The Duty of a Magistrate Toward Scientific
+Discoveries.' And if the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences does
+not add"----
+
+M. Ginory suddenly turned red and interrupted Bernardet with a word and
+a gesture.
+
+"Monsieur Bernardet!"
+
+"I can only repeat, Monsieur, what public opinion thinks and says," said
+Bernardet, bowing low. "There was an illusion to this affair written up.
+An amiable fellow--that Paul Rodier."
+
+"Ah! Monsieur Bernardet, Monsieur Bernardet!" laughingly said the
+Magistrate, "you have a weakness for reporters. Do you want me to tell
+you something? You will finish by becoming a journalist."
+
+"And you will certainly finish in the habit of a member of the Academy,
+Monsieur Ginory," said the little Bernardet, with his air of a mocking
+abbe.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+VERY often, after his release from prison, Jacques Dantin went to the
+corner of the cemetery at Montmartre, where his friend lay. And he
+always carried flowers. It had become to him, since the terrible strain
+of his detention, a necessity, a habit. The dead are living! They wait,
+they understand, they listen!
+
+It seemed to Dantin that he had but one aim. Alas! What had been the
+wish, the last dream of the dead man would never be realized. That
+fortune which Rovere had intended for the child whom he had no right to
+call his own would go, was going to some far-off cousins of whose
+existence the ex-Consul was not even aware perhaps, and whom he
+certainly had never known--to some indifferent persons, chance
+relatives, strangers.
+
+"I ought not to have waited for him to tell me what his intentions were
+regarding his daughter," Dantin often thought. What would become of her,
+the poor girl, who knew the secret of her birth and who remained silent,
+piously devoting herself to the old soldier whose name she bore?
+
+One day in February a sad, gray day, Jacques Dantin, thinking of the
+past Winter so unhappy of the sad secret grave and heavy, strolled
+along toward that granite tomb near which Rovere slept. He recalled the
+curious crowd which had accompanied his dead friend to its last resting
+place: the flowers; the under current of excitement; the cortege.
+Silence now filled the place! Dark shadows could be seen here and there
+between the tombs at the end of paths. It was not a visiting day nor an
+hour usual for funerals. This solitude pleased Jacques. He felt near to
+him whom he loved.
+
+Louis-Pierre Rovere. That name, which Moniche had had engraved, evoked
+many remembrances for this man who had for a time been suspected of
+assassinating him. All his childhood, all his youth, all the past! How
+quickly the years had fled, such ruined years. So much of fever, of
+agitation--so many ambitions, deceptions, in order to end here.
+
+"He is at rest at least," thought Dantin, remembering his own life,
+without aim, without happiness. And he also would rest soon, having not
+even a friend in this great city of Paris whom he could depend upon to
+pay him a last visit. A ruined, wicked, useless life!
+
+He again bade Rovere good-bye speaking to him, calling him thee and thou
+as of old. Then he went slowly away. But at the end of a walk he turned
+around to look once more at the place where his friend lay. He saw,
+coming that way, between the tombs, as if by some cross alley, a woman
+in black, who was walking directly toward the place he had left. He
+stopped, waiting--yes, it was to Rovere's tomb that she was going. Tall,
+svelte, and as far as Jacques Dantin could see, she was young. He said
+to himself:
+
+"It is his daughter!"
+
+The memory of their last interview came to him. He saw his unhappy
+friend, haggard, standing in front of his open safe, searching through
+his papers for those which represented his child's fortune. If this was
+his friend's daughter, it was to him that Rovere had looked to assure
+her future.
+
+He walked slowly back to the tomb. The woman in black was now kneeling
+near the gray stone. Bent over, arranging a bouquet of chrysanthemums
+which she had brought. Dantin could see only her kneeling form and black
+draperies.
+
+She was praying now!
+
+Dantin stood looking at her, and when at last she arose he saw that she
+was tall and elegant in her mourning robes. He advanced toward her. The
+noise of his footsteps on the gravel caused her to turn her head, and
+Dantin saw a beautiful face, young and sad. She had blonde hair and
+large eyes, which opened wide in surprise. He saw the same expression of
+the eyes which Rovere's had borne.
+
+The young woman instinctively made a movement as if to go away, to give
+place to the newcomer. But Dantin stopped her with a gesture.
+
+"Do not go away, Mademoiselle. I am the best friend of the one who
+sleeps here."
+
+She stopped, pale and timid.
+
+"I know very well that you loved him," he added.
+
+She unconsciously let a frightened cry escape her and looked helplessly
+around.
+
+"He told me all," Dantin slowly said. "I am Jacques Dantin. He has
+spoken to you of me, I think"----
+
+"Yes," the young woman answered.
+
+Dantin involuntarily shivered. Her voice had the same _timbre_ as
+Rovere's.
+
+In the silence of the cemetery, near the tomb, before that name,
+Louis-Pierre Rovere, which seemed almost like the presence of his dead
+friend, Dantin felt the temptation to reveal to this girl what her
+father had wished her to know.
+
+They knew each other without ever having met. One word was enough, one
+name was sufficient, in order that the secret which united them should
+bring them nearer each other. What Dantin was to Rovere, Rovere had told
+Marthe again and again.
+
+Then, as if from the depths of the tomb, Rovere had ordered him to
+speak. Jacques Dantin, in the solemn silence of that City of the Dead,
+confided to the young girl what her father had tried to tell him. He
+spoke rapidly, the words, "A legacy--in trust--a fortune" fell from his
+lips. But the young girl quickly interrupted him with a grand gesture.
+
+"I do not wish to know what any one has told you of me. I am the
+daughter of a man who awaits me at Blois, who is old, who loves only me,
+who needs only me, and I need nothing!"
+
+There was in her tone an accent of command, of resolution, which Dantin
+recognized as one of Rovere's most remarkable characteristics.
+
+Had Dantin known nothing, this sound in the voice, this ardent look on
+the pale face, would have given him a hint or a suspicion, and have
+obliged him to think of Rovere. Rovere lived again in this woman in
+black whom Jacques Dantin saw for the first time.
+
+"Then?" asked this friend of the dead man, as if awaiting an order.
+
+"Then," said the young girl in her deep voice, "when you meet me near
+this tomb do not speak to me of anything. If you should meet me outside
+this cemetery, do not recognize me. The secret which was confided to you
+by the one who sleeps there, is the secret of a dead one whom I
+adored--_my mother_; and of a living person whom I reverence--_my
+father!_"
+
+She accented the words with a sort of tender, passionate piety, and
+Jacques Dantin saw that her eyes were filled with tears.
+
+"Now, adieu!" she said.
+
+Jacques still wished to speak of that last confidence of the dying man,
+but she said again:
+
+"Adieu!"
+
+With her hand, gloved in black, she made the sign of the Cross, smiled
+sadly as she looked at the tomb where the chrysanthemums lay, then
+lowering her veil she went away, and Dantin, standing near the gray
+tomb, saw her disappear at the end of an alley.
+
+The martyr, expiating near the old crippled man, a fault of which she
+was innocent, went back to him who was without suspicion; to him who
+adored her and to whom she was, in their poor apartment in Blois, his
+saint and his daughter.
+
+She would watch, she would lose her youth, near that old soldier whose
+robust constitution would endure many, many long years. She would pay
+her dead mother's debt; she would pay it by devoting every hour of her
+life to this man whose name she bore--an illustrious name, a name
+belonging to the victories, to the struggles, to the history of
+yesterday--she would be the hostage, the expiatory victim.
+
+With all her life would she redeem the fault of that other!
+
+"And who knows, my poor Rovere," said Jacques Dantin, "thy daughter,
+proud of her sacrifice, is perhaps happier in doing this!"
+
+In his turn he left the tomb, he went out of the cemetery, he wished to
+walk to his lodging in the Rue Richelieu. He had only taken a few steps
+along the Boulevard, where--it seemed but yesterday--he had followed
+(talking with Bernardet) behind Rovere's funeral carriage, when he
+nearly ran into a little man who was hurrying along the pavement. The
+police officer saluted him, with a shaking of the head, which had in it
+regret, a little confusion, some excuses.
+
+"Ah! Monsieur Dantin, what a grudge you must have against me!"
+
+"Not at all," said Dantin. "You thought that you were doing your duty,
+and it did not displease me to have you try to so quickly avenge my poor
+Rovere."
+
+"Avenge him! Yes, he will be! I would not give four sous for Charles
+Prades's head to-morrow, when he is tried. We shall see each other in
+court. _Au revoir_, Monsieur Dantin, and all my excuses!"
+
+"_Au revoir_, Monsieur Bernardet, and all my compliments!"
+
+The two men separated. Bernardet was on his way home to breakfast. He
+was late. Mme. Bernardet would be waiting, and a little red and
+breathless he hurried along. He stopped on hearing a newsboy announce
+the last number of _Lutece_.
+
+"Ask for the account of the trial to-morrow: The inquest by Paul Rodier
+on the crime of the Boulevard de Clichy!"
+
+The newsboy saluted Bernardet whom he knew very well.
+
+"Give me a paper!" said the police officer. The boy pulled out a paper
+from the package he was carrying, and waved it over his head like a
+flag.
+
+"Ah! I understand, that interests you, Monsieur Bernardet!"
+
+And while the little man looked for the heading _Lutece_ in capital
+letters--the title which Paul Rodier had given to a series of interviews
+with celebrated physicians, the newsboy, giving Bernardet his change,
+said:
+
+"To-morrow is the trial. But there is no doubt, is there, Monsieur
+Bernardet? Prades is condemned in advance!"
+
+"He has confessed, it is an accomplished fact," Bernardet replied,
+pocketing his change.
+
+"_Au revoir_ and thanks, Monsieur Bernardet."
+
+And the newsboy, going on his way, cried out:
+
+"Ask for _Lutece_--The Rovere trial! The affair to-morrow! Paul Rodier's
+inquest on the eye of the dead man!" His voice was at last drowned in
+the noise of tramways and cabs.
+
+M. Bernardet hurried on. The little ones would have become impatient,
+yes, yes, waiting for him, and asking for him around the table at home.
+He looked at the paper which he had bought. Paul Rodier, in regard to
+the question which he, Bernardet, had raised, had interviewed savants
+physiologists, psychologists, and in good journalistic style had
+published, the evening before the trial, the result of his inquest.
+
+M. Bernardet read as he hastened along the long titles in capitals in
+large head lines.
+
+"A Scientific Problem Apropos of the Rovere Affair!"
+
+"Questions of Medical Jurisprudence!"
+
+"The Eye of the Dead Man!"
+
+"Interviews and Opinions of MM. Les Docteurs Brouardel, Roux, Duclaux,
+Pean, Robin, Pozzi, Blum, Widal, Gilles de la Tourette"----
+
+Bernardet turned the leaves. The interviews filled two pages at least in
+solid columns.
+
+"So much the better! So much the better!" said the police officer
+enchanted. And hastening along even faster, he said to himself:
+
+"I am going to read all that to the children; yes, all that--it will
+amuse them--life is a romance like any other! More incredible than any
+other! And these questions; the unknown, the invisible, all these
+problems--how interesting they are! And the mystery--so amusing!"
+
+JULES CLARETIE of the French Academy; Mrs. Carlton A. Kingsbury,
+Translator.
+
+
+
+
+                          Transcriber's Notes:
+
+For reasons unknown, the chapter headings show no Chapter XII and no
+Chapter XV. The chapter headings were left unchanged. I am told that
+both a copy of the physical book and the copy at The Interne Archive
+have the same Chapter numbering sequence.
+
+Passages in italics are indicated by _underscores_.
+
+Small caps have been replaced with ALL CAPS text.
+
+On page 15, a quotation mark was placed before "But since you".
+
+On page 15, a quotation mark was placed before "But I am nothing".
+
+On page 35, "in so unforseen" was replaced with "in so unforeseen".
+
+On page 38, "the wordly magistrate" was replaced with "the worldly
+magistrate".
+
+On page 40, the quotation mark after "which he wished to" was removed.
+
+On page 40, "the study of M. Rovero" was replaced with "the study of M.
+Rovere".
+
+On page 42, "to be exact, thirty-six" was replaced with "to be exact,
+twenty-six years".
+
+On page 43, "14th of June, 1848" was replaced with "14th of June, 1868".
+
+On page 46, "devination" was replaced with "divination".
+
+On page 49, "reentered the salon" was replaced with "reentered the
+salon".
+
+On page 50, "des Aubrays" was replaced with "des Audrays".
+
+On page 61, "tatooings" was replaced with "tattooings".
+
+On page 64, a single quotation mark before "Art thou satisfied" was
+replaced with a double quotation mark.
+
+On page 82, "acqueous" was replaced with "aqueous".
+
+On page 85, "sixteerth" was replaced with "sixteenth".
+
+On page 91, "Mme. Monchie" was replaced with "Mme. Moniche".
+
+On page 99, "chosen by Mr. Rovere" was replaced with "chosen by M.
+Rovere".
+
+On page 101, "mein" was replaced with "mien".
+
+On page 110, the [oe] ligature was replaced with "oe".
+
+On page 111, the period after "he replied" was replaced with a comma.
+
+On page 111, a paragraph marker was placed after "Why?".
+
+On page 121, the quotation mark was removed after "Rovere's murder?".
+
+On page 122, a period was placed after "of your biography".
+
+On page 129, the quotation mark was removed after "of death."
+
+On page 140, "Rovere's" was replaced with "Rovere's".
+
+On page 146, "charcteristic" was replaced with "characteristic".
+
+On page 150, "portait which resembled" was replaced with "portrait which
+resembled".
+
+On page 153, "Bernadet left enchanted" was replaced with "Bernardet left
+enchanted".
+
+On page 164, "retain silent" was replaced with "remain silent".
+
+On page 171, "grey" was replaced with "gray".
+
+On page 184, the [oe] ligature was replaced with "oe".
+
+On page 224, "had came there" was replaced with "had come there".
+
+On page 230, "one mornnig" was replaced with "one morning".
+
+On page 230, "Prades, moreover" was replaced with "Prades, moreover".
+
+On page 232, "my dear brother-in law" was replaced with "my dear
+brother-in-law".
+
+On page 235, "necessity for fright" was replaced with "necessity for
+flight."
+
+On page 241, "in the labratory" was replaced with "in the laboratory".
+
+On page 250, "chysanthemums" was replaced with "chrysanthemums".
+
+On page 251, "hurring" was replaced with "hurrying".
+
+On page 251, "Prades's" was replaced with "Prades's".
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Crime of the Boulevard, by Jules Claretie
+
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