CHAPTER XX

IN WHICH ROULETABILLE GIVES A CORPOREAL DEMONSTRATION OF THE POSSIBILITY OF “THE BODY TOO MANY”

Through the window I could see Rouletabille and the Lady in Black entering the Square Tower. Never had the young reporter walked with such solemn stateliness. His demeanor might have made one smile, if instead, at this tragic moment, it had not added to our apprehensions. Never had magistrate or counsellor, wearing the purple or the ermine, entered the court room where the accused waited him with more of threatening yet tranquil majesty. But I fancy, too, that never had a judge looked so pale.

As to the Lady in Black, it could easily be seen that she was making a powerful effort to hide the sentiments of horror which, in spite of all, pierced through her troubled glance, and to hide from us the emotion which made her cling feverishly to the arm of her young companion. Robert Darzac, too, had the sombre and resolute mien of a judge. But that which most of all added to our surprise and affright was the entrance of Pere Jacques, Walter and Mattoni into the Square Tower. All three were armed with muskets, and placed themselves in silence before the door, where they stood with military precision while they received from the lips of Rouletabille the order to let no person _go out_ from the Old château. Edith was overwhelmed with terror, and demanded of Mattoni and Walter, both of whom were greatly attached to her, what their presence signified and what their weapons threatened; but, to my great astonishment, they returned no answer. Then the little woman rushed to the door which gave access to Old Bob’s room, and, extending her two arms across the threshold, as if to bar the passage, she cried:

“What are you going to do? You do not mean to kill _him_?”

“No, Madame,” replied Rouletabille, gravely. “We are going to judge _him_. And in order to be sure that the judges shall not be executioners we are all going to swear upon the body of Pere Bernier, after having laid down our arms, that each of us will keep guard over himself.”

And he led us into the chamber where Mere Bernier continued to groan beside the bier of her spouse whom “the oldest knife known to the human race” had smitten. There we laid aside our revolvers and took the oath which Rouletabille exacted. Mrs. Rance alone made some difficulties about giving up the weapon which Rouletabille was well aware that she had concealed in her clothing. But upon the urging of the reporter who made her understand that the general disarming ought to reassure her, she finally consented.

The oath having been taken, Rouletabille, with the Lady in Black still on his arm, went from the funereal chamber into the corridor; but instead of directing our steps toward the apartment of Old Bob as we expected him to do, he went straight to the door which afforded entrance to the chamber of “the body too many.” And, drawing from his pocket the little special key of which I have spoken, he opened the door.

We were all astonished in entering the rooms which had been occupied by M. and Mme. Darzac to see upon M. Darzac’s desk the drawing board, the wash drawing upon which our friend had worked at the side of Old Bob in the latter’s workshop in the Court of the Bold, and also the little dish full of red paint and the tiny brush drenched with the paint. And, lastly, in the middle of the desk, there was placed, appearing very much at its ease, upon its bloody jaws, “the oldest skull of humanity.”

Rouletabille locked and bolted the door and said to us, himself greatly affected, while we listened with stupefaction:

“Sit down, if you please, ladies and gentlemen.”

Some chairs were arranged around the table and in these we seated ourselves, a prey to the most disquieting fancies--I might almost say to an agony of suspense. A secret presentiment warned us that all the familiar appurtenances of drawing which were displayed before us might hide, under their apparent commonplace tranquility, the terrible causes which helped to bring about this most fearful of dramas. And as we looked upon it, the skull seemed to smile like Old Bob.

“You will acknowledge,” began Rouletabille, “that there is here, around this table one chair too many, and, in consequence, one person too few--to particularize, M. Arthur Rance, for whom we cannot wait much longer.”

“Perhaps at this very moment my husband possesses the proofs of Old Bob’s innocence!” observed Mme. Edith, whom all these preparations had disturbed more than anyone else. “I entreat Mme. Darzac to join me in imploring these gentlemen to do nothing until Arthur’s return.”

The Lady in Black had no opportunity to intervene, for before Mme. Edith finished speaking, we heard a loud noise outside the door of the corridor. A knock came at the door and we heard the voice of Arthur Rance begging us to open immediately. He cried:

“_I have brought the pin with the ruby head!_”

Rouletabille opened the door.

“Arthur Rance, you are come then at last!” he exclaimed.

Edith’s husband seemed plunged in the deepest melancholy.

“What have you to tell me? What has happened? Some new misfortune? Ah, I feared so--feared that I had arrived too late when I saw the iron gate closed and heard the prayers for the dead chanted in the tower. Yes--I knew that you had _executed_ Old Bob!”

Rouletabille, who had closed and bolted the door behind Arthur Rance turned to the American and said:

“Old Bob is alive and Pere Bernier is dead. Be seated, Monsieur.”

Arthur Rance stared at the speaker in amazement; then looked in consternation at the drawing board, the dish of paint and the bloody skull and demanded:

“Who killed him?”

Then, condescending to notice that his wife was there, he pressed her hand, but his eyes were fixed upon the Lady in Black.

“Before his death, Bernier accused Frederic Larsan,” answered M. Darzac.

“Do you mean to say by that that he accused Old Bob?” interrupted M. Rance indignantly. “I will not suffer that. I, too, had some doubts in regard to the personality of our beloved uncle, but I tell you that I have the ruby-headed pin!”

What was he talking about with his “little ruby-headed pin”? I remembered that Mme. Edith had told us that Old Bob had snatched one from her hand when she had playfully pricked him with it on the night of the drama of the Square Tower. But what relation could there be between this pin and the adventure of Old Bob? Arthur Rance did not wait for us to ask him, but hurried on to tell us that this little pin had disappeared at the same time as Old Bob and that he had found it in the possession of “the Hangman of the Sea,” fastening a sheaf of bank notes which the old uncle had paid him on that fated night for his complicity and his silence in having brought him in the fisher boat to the grotto of Romeo and Juliet. And M. Rance told us moreover that Tullio had withdrawn from the spot at dawn, greatly disquieted at the non-appearance of his passenger. Rance concluded, triumphantly:

“A man who gives a ruby pin to another man in a boat cannot be at the same moment tied up in a potato sack in the Square Tower.”

Upon which Mrs. Rance inquired:

“What gave you the idea of going to San Remo? Did you know that Tullio was to be found there?”

“I received an anonymous letter informing me of his whereabouts.”

“It was I who sent it to you,” said Rouletabille, tranquilly. And, then, turning to the rest of us, he said in frigid tones:

“Ladies and gentlemen, I congratulate myself upon the prompt return of M. Arthur Rance. At the present moment there are reunited around this table all the members of the house party of the Château of Hercules for whom my corporeal demonstration of the possibility of the ‘body too many’ may have some interest. I entreat you to give me your undivided attention.”

But Arthur Rance halted him with a quick movement.

“What do you mean by the expression: ‘There are united around this table all the members of the party for whom the corporeal demonstration of the possibility of the body too many can have any interest’?”

“I mean,” declared Rouletabille, “all those among whom we may hope to find Larsan.”

The Lady in Black, who had up to this time not uttered a word, arose trembling to her feet.

“Do you mean,” she breathed, her eyes filled with agonized apprehension, “that Larsan is now among us?”

“I am sure of it,” Rouletabille replied, gravely.

There was an awful silence during which none of us dared look at each other.

The reporter continued, still in the same frigid tone:

“I am sure of it--and there is no reason why the idea should surprise you, Madame, since it has not for a moment left your own mind. As to the rest of us, is it not true, gentlemen, that the idea has occurred to each one of us at the same moment on the day when we took luncheon on the terrace of the Bold when all our eyes were hidden by the black glasses? If I except Mrs. Rance, who is there among us that did not feel the presence of Larsan at that time?”

“That is a question which ought to be propounded to Professor Stangerson as well as to the rest of us,” interposed Arthur Rance, instantly. “For from the moment when we begin any course of reasoning along these lines, I can see no object in not having the Professor, who was at the table at luncheon with us on that day, here at this time also.”

“Mr. Rance!” cried the Lady in Black.

“Yes, I must repeat it, if you will pardon me,” replied Edith’s husband, haughtily. “Monsieur Rouletabille was wrong to generalize when he said, ‘All the members of the house party----’”

“Professor Stangerson is so far from us in spirit that I have no need of his presence here,” pronounced Rouletabille in a tone so stern and solemn that it fell impressively on the ears of each and every one among us. “Although Professor Stangerson had lived with us in the Château of Hercules, he was not one of us in regard to feeling the presence of Larsan on that day. And Larsan is here among us.”

This time we stole stealthy glances at each other as though we suspected each other of stealing, and the idea that Larsan might really be among us appeared to me so mad that I exclaimed, forgetting that I had promised not to address Rouletabille:

“But at that luncheon on the terrace, there was still another person whom I do not see here.”

Rouletabille cast an angry look at me as he answered:

“Still Prince Galitch! I have already told you, Sainclair, with what task the Prince is occupying himself on this frontier and I swear to you that it is not the trouble of Professor Stangerson’s daughter which concerns him. Leave Prince Galitch to his humanitarian labors!”

“All that is not reasonable,” I remarked almost mechanically.

“To tell the truth, Sainclair, your nonsense prevents me from reasoning.”

But I had launched out, and, forgetting that I had promised Mme. Edith to defend Old Bob, I started in to attack him for the pleasure of proving Rouletabille in the wrong--and, besides, I felt, Edith would not bear rancor against me for very long.

“Old Bob,” I began, in the clearest and most assured tones that I could command, “was also at that luncheon on the terrace and you take him entirely out of your calculations on account of this little ruby pin. But of what use is this little pin to prove to us that Old Bob was rowed away by Tullio, who waited for him at the orifice of a gallery leading from the shaft to the sea, if we cannot discover how Old Bob could, as he said, have gone by way of the shaft which we found closed from above and on the outside?”

“Which _you_ found closed, you mean,” returned Rouletabille, fixing his eyes upon me with a strange expression which somehow embarrassed me. “I, on the contrary, found the shaft open. I had sent you after Mattoni and Pere Jacques. When you came back, you found me in the same place in the Court of the Bold, but I had had time to run to the shaft and find out that it had been opened.”

“And to close it again!” I cried. “And why did you close it? Whom did you wish to deceive?”

“_You, monsieur!_”

He pronounced these two words with a contempt so crushing that the blood rushed to my face. I arose. Every eye was turned upon me and as I remembered the rudeness with which Rouletabille had treated me a little while ago before M. Darzac, I had the horrible feeling that every eye was suspecting me--accusing me! _Yes! I felt myself entirely wrapped around by the atrocious fancy in the mind of each and all that I might be Larsan!_

I! Larsan!

I looked at each one in turn. Rouletabille did not lower his eyes while my own were seeking to make him feel the fierce protestation of my whole being and my indignation against such a monstrous supposition. Anger ran through my veins like a flame.

“Now, it is high time to end this farce!” I cried. “If Old Bob is removed from consideration and Professor Stangerson and Prince Galitch, there remain only ourselves--we who are locked up in this room--and if Larsan is among us, show us to him, Rouletabille!”

I repeated the words furiously, for the eyes of the boy, although they were piercing through me, seemed to be fixed upon something outside of and apart from me.

“Show him to us! Name him! You are as slow here as you were at the Court of Assizes.”

“Had I not good reason at the Court of Assizes for being as slow as I was?” he replied, without betraying any emotion.

“You want him to escape this time, too, then?”

“No! I swear to _you_ that this time he shall _not_ escape.”

Why did his voice continue to be so threatening when he addressed me? Could it be really--_really_ that he suspected me of being Larsan? My eyes wandered to those of the Lady in Black. She was gazing on me in terror.

“Rouletabille!” I cried madly, feeling my voice almost smothered in my throat. “You do not--you cannot suspect----!”

At this moment, a pistol shot sounded outside, very near to the Square Tower. We all leaped to our feet, remembering the order given by the reporter to the three servants to fire upon anyone who should attempt to go out of the Square Tower. Edith uttered a cry and tried to run out of the room, but Rouletabille, who had not made so much as a gesture, calmed her with a word.

“If anyone had drawn upon _him_,” he said, “the three men would have fired together. That pistol shot was merely a signal--a direction for me to begin.”

Turning to me, he continued:

“M. Sainclair, you ought to know that I never suspect any person or anything without previously having satisfied myself upon the ‘ground of pure reason.’ That is a solid staff which has never yet failed me on the road and on which I invite you all to lean with me. Larsan is here among us, and the power of pure reason is going to show him to you; so be seated again, if you please, and do not take your eyes from me, for I am going to begin on this paper the corporeal demonstration of the possibility of ‘the body too many’!”

* * * * *

First of all, he investigated to make sure that the bolts of the door behind him were closely drawn; then, returning to the table, he took up a compass.

“I have the intention of making my demonstration,” he said, “along the same lines on which the ‘body too many’ has produced itself. It will be, thereby, only the more irrefutable.”

And, with his compass, he took, upon M. Darzac’s drawing, the measure of the radius of the circle which represented the space occupied by the Tower of the Bold, so that he was immediately afterward able to trace the same circle upon an immaculate piece of white paper which he had fastened with copper-headed nails to another drawing board.

When the circle was traced, Rouletabille, putting down his compass, picked up the tiny dish of red paint and asked M. Darzac whether he recognized it as the coloring matter he had used. M. Darzac, who, from all appearances, understood the significance of the young man’s words and actions no better than the rest of us, replied that, to the best of his belief, it was the same paint which he had mixed for his wash drawing.

A good half of the paint had dried up in the bottom of the dish, but, according to the opinion expressed by M. Darzac, the part which remained would, upon paper, give nearly the same tint with which he had “washed” the drawing of the peninsula of Hercules.

“No one has touched it,” said Rouletabille very gravely, “and nothing has been added to it, save a single tear. Besides, you will see that a tear more or less in the paint cup would detract nothing from the value of my demonstration.”

Thus saying, he dipped the brush in the paint and began carefully to “wash” all the space occupied by the circle which he had previously traced. He did this with the care and exactitude which had already astonished me in the Tower of the Bold when I had been nearly stupefied in seeing him absorbed in a drawing when we knew that someone had been assassinated.

When he had finished he looked at his immense silver watch and said:

“You may see, ladies and gentlemen, that the coating of paint which covers my circle is neither more nor less thick than that which covers the circle of M. Darzac. It is almost the same thing--the same tint.”

“Undoubtedly,” rejoined M. Darzac. “But what does all this signify?”

“Wait!” replied the reporter. “It is understood, then, that it is you who have made this plan and this painting?”

“I was certainly in enough of an ill humor when I found the state it was in that time I went with you into Old Bob’s cabinet when we came out of the Square Tower. Old Bob had ruined my drawing by letting his skull roll over it.”

“We are there!” spoke up Rouletabille, quick as a flash. And he lifted from the bureau the “oldest skull of the human race.” He turned it over and showed the crimsoned jaws to M. Darzac. Then he inquired:

“Is it your opinion that the red which we see upon that under jaw is no different from the red which would be taken off by any object coming in contact with your plan?”

“I don’t see how there could be any doubt of it! The skull was upside down on my drawing when we entered the workshop.”

“Let us continue then to remain of the same opinion!” said the reporter.

Then he arose, holding the skull in the crook of his arm, and went into the alcove in the wall, lighted by a large window and crossed by bars, which had been a loophole for cannon in the ancient times, and which M. Darzac had used as a dressing room. There he struck a match and lighted a lamp filled with spirits of wine which stood upon a little table. Upon this lamp he set a little pot which he had previously filled with water. The skull still lay in the crook of his arm.

* * * * *

During this weird cookery, we never took our eyes off him. Never had Rouletabille’s behavior appeared to us so incomprehensible nor so mysterious nor so disturbing. The more he explained matters to us and the more he did, the less we understood. And we were afraid because we felt that someone--_someone among us--one of ourselves_--had reason for fear. Who was this one? Perhaps the most calm of us all!

But the calmest of all was Rouletabille between his skull and his casserole.

But what? Why did we all suddenly recoil with a single movement? Why were the eyes of M. Darzac wide with a new terror--why did the Lady in Black--Arthur Rance--I, myself--utter the same syllable--a name which expired on our lips: “_Larsan!_”?

Where had we seen him? Where had we discovered him this time, we who were gazing at Rouletabille? Ah, that profile, in the red shadow of the approaching twilight, that brow in the background of the alcove upon which the sunset rays stream as did the dawn on the morning of the crime! Oh, that stern jaw, bespeaking an iron will, which appeared before us, not, as in the light of day, gentle though a little bitter, but evil and threatening. How like Rouletabille was to Larsan! How in that moment the son resembled his father! It was Larsan’s very self!

[Illustration: Ah! that profile standing out darkly from the depths of the embrasure, lighted up by the red glow of the falling night.]

Another transformation. At a moan from his mother Rouletabille came out of his funereal frame and appeared before us as a bandit, and as he hurried toward us, he was Rouletabille once more. Mme. Edith, who had never seen Larsan, could not understand. She whispered to me, “What is going on?”

Rouletabille was there before us with his hot water in the casserole, a napkin and his skull. And he washed the skull.

It was soon done. The paint disappeared. He made us bear witness to the fact. Then, placing himself in front of the bureau, he stood in mute contemplation before his own drawing. This lasted for ten minutes, during which he had, by a sign, ordered us to keep silence--ten minutes which seemed as long as the same number of hours. What was he waiting for? What did he expect? Suddenly, he seized the skull in his right hand, and with the gesture familiar to those who play at bowling, he tossed it about so that it rolled hither and yon over the drawing; then he showed us the skull and bade us notice that it bore no trace of red paint. Rouletabille drew out his watch again.

“The paint has dried upon the plan,” he said. “It has taken a quarter of an hour to dry. Upon the 11th of April we saw at five o’clock in the afternoon, M. Darzac entering the Square Tower and coming from out of doors. But M. Darzac, after having entered the Square Tower, and after having fastened behind him the bolts of his door, as he tells us, has not gone out again until we came to fetch him after six o’clock. As to Old Bob, we had seen him enter the Square Tower at six o’clock and there was no paint on this skull then!

“_How was this paint which has taken only a quarter of an hour to dry upon this plan, fresh enough still--more than an hour after M. Darzac had left it--to stain Old Bob’s skull when the savant, with a movement of anger, threw it down on the plan as he entered the Round Tower?_ There is only one explanation of this, and I defy you to find another--and that is that _the Robert Darzac who entered the Square Tower at five o’clock and whom no one has seen going out again, was not the same as the one who came to paint in the Round Tower before the arrival of Old Bob at six o’clock and whom we found in the room in the Square Tower without having seen him enter there and with whom we went out. In one word--he was not the same man as the M. Darzac here present before us. The testimony of pure reason shows that there are two personalities appearing in the guise of Robert Darzac!_”

And Rouletabille turned his eyes full upon the man whose name he had uttered.

Darzac, like all the rest of us, was under the spell of the luminous demonstration of the young reporter. We were all divided between a new horror and a boundless admiration. How clear was every word that Rouletabille had uttered! How clear--and how terrible! Here again we found the mark of his prodigious and logical mathematical intelligence!

M. Darzac cried out:

“It was thus, then, that _he_ was able to enter the Square Tower under a disguise which made him, without doubt, my very image! It was thus that he was able to hide behind the panel in such a way that I did not see him myself when I came here to write my letters after quitting the Tower of the Bold, where I left my drawing. But how could Pere Bernier have opened to him?”

“Doubtless,” replied Rouletabille, who had taken the hand of the Lady in Black in both his own as though he wished to give her courage, “he must have believed that it was yourself.”

“That then explains the fact that when I reached my door I had only to push it open. Pere Bernier believed that I was within.”

“Exactly: that is good reasoning!” declared Rouletabille. “And Pere Bernier, who had opened to Darzac No. 1, had not troubled himself about No. 2, since he did not see him any more than yourself. You certainly reached the Square Tower at the moment that Sainclair and myself called Bernier to the parapet to see whether he could help us in understanding the strange gesticulations of Old Bob, talking at the threshold of the Barma Grande to Mrs. Rance and Prince Galitch.”

“But Mere Bernier!” cried M. Darzac. “She had gone into her lodge. Was she not astonished to see M. Darzac come in a second time when she had not seen him go out?”

“Let us suppose,” replied the young reporter with a sad smile; “let us suppose, M. Darzac, that Mere Bernier at that moment--the moment when you passed into your apartments--that is to say, when the second apparition of Darzac passed in--was occupied in picking up the potatoes and putting them back into the sack which I had emptied upon her floor--and we shall suppose the truth.”

“Well, then, I can congratulate myself on the fact that I am still upon earth!”

“Congratulate yourself, M. Darzac? congratulate yourself!”

“When I remember that as soon as I entered my room, I drew the bolts as I have told you that I did, that I began to work and that this wretch was hidden behind my back. Why, he might have killed me without hindrance!”

Rouletabille stepped close to M. Darzac and fixed his eyes upon him with a look that seemed to read his soul.

“Why did he not kill you then?” he asked.

“You know very well that he was waiting for someone else,” replied M. Darzac, turning his face sorrowfully toward the Lady in Black.

Rouletabille was now so close to M. Darzac that their shadows on the floor looked like that of one strangely formed being. The lad put his two hands on the older man’s shoulders.

“M. Darzac,” he said, his voice again clear and strong, “I have a confession to make to you. When I began to understand how the ‘body too many’ had effected an entrance and when I had discovered that you did nothing to undeceive us in regard to the hour of five o’clock at which we had believed--at which everyone, rather, except myself, believed--that you had entered the Square Tower, I felt that I had the right to suspect that the murderer was not the man who at five o’clock entered the Square Tower under the form of Darzac. I thought, on the contrary, that that Darzac might be the true Darzac and you might be the false one. Ah, my dear M. Darzac, how I have suspected you!”

“That was madness!” cried M. Darzac. “If I did not tell you the exact hour at which I entered the Square Tower it was because the time was somewhat vague in my own mind and I did not attach any importance to it.”

“In such a manner, M. Darzac,” continued Rouletabille, without paying any attention to the interruptions of his interlocutor, the emotion of the Lady in Black and our attitude, more than ever filled with terror. “In such a manner as that you could have stolen away the true Darzac when he came from outside and, by your own carefulness and the too faithful help of the Lady in Black, could have taken his place and have been perfectly able to defy detection of your audacious enterprise. This was my imagination--only my imagination, M. Darzac; don’t let it disturb you. But in such a manner as this, I had thought that, you being Larsan, the man who was put in the sack was Darzac. Ah! the fancies that I have had! and the useless suspicions!”

“Bah!” responded Mathilde’s husband, gloomily. “We are all suspicious here!”

Rouletabille turned his back upon M. Darzac, put his hands in his pocket and said, addressing himself to Mathilde, who seemed ready to swoon before the horror of Rouletabille’s imaginings:

“Courage for a little while longer, Madame!”

And he began speaking again, in his “teacher’s” voice which I knew so well, and with the air of a professor of mathematics propounding or resolving a theorem:

“You see, M. Darzac, there are two manifestations of Robert Darzac. To know which was the true one and which was the one which formed a disguise for Larsan--my duty, M. Darzac--that which the power of pure reason showed me--was to examine, without fear or reproach, both of these manifestations--_in all impartiality_. Thus, I begin with you--M. Darzac.”

M. Darzac replied:

“It does not matter since you suspect me no longer. But you must tell me immediately who is Larsan. I insist upon it--I demand it!”

“We all demand it--and at once!” we all cried, turning upon both of them. Mathilde rushed up to her child and placed herself in front of him, as if to protect him. We felt the pathos of her attitude but the scene had endured too long and we were beyond the limits of patience.

“If he knows who is Larsan let him speak out and make an end of this!” exclaimed Arthur Rance.

And suddenly, just as the thought crossed my mind that I had heard the same cries of anger and impatience two years before at the Court of Assizes, another pistol shot sounded outside the door of the Square Tower, and we were all so seized with consternation that our anger fell away in a moment and we found ourselves not threatening Rouletabille but entreating him to put an end as soon as possible to this intolerable situation. At this moment, it actually seemed as though we were each imploring him to speak out, as though we calculated that by doing so, we would prove, not only to the others but to ourselves, that we were not Larsan.

As soon as the second shot was heard, the countenance of Rouletabille changed completely. His face seemed transformed and his whole being appeared to vibrate with a savage energy. Laying aside the half bantering manner which he had used toward M. Darzac and which we had all found extremely disagreeable, he gently released himself from the clasp of the Lady in Black, who still clung to him, walked toward the door, folded his arms and said:

“You see, my friends, in an affair like this, it does not do to neglect any point. There were two manifestations of Robert Darzac which entered the Square Tower. There were two manifestations which came out--and one of these was in the sack! That is where one loses oneself. And _even now_, I do not wish to make any mistakes! Will M. Darzac, here present, permit me to say that I had a hundred excuses for suspecting him?”

Then I thought to myself: “How unlucky that he did not mention his suspicions to me! I would have told him about the map of Australia!”

M. Darzac strode across the room and planted himself in front of the young reporter and said in a tone nearly inaudible from anger:

“What excuses? I ask you, what excuses?”

“You will soon understand, my friend,” said the reporter with the utmost calmness. “The first thing that I said to myself while I was examining the conditions surrounding _your_ manifestation of Larsan, was this: ‘Nonsense! if he were Larsan, would not Professor Stangerson’s daughter have perceived it?’ That is self evident--the common sense of that thought--is it not? But when I tried to look into the mind of the lady who has become Mme. Darzac, I discovered beyond a doubt, Monsieur, that all the while she could not free herself from just this fear--the fear that you might be Larsan!”

Mathilde, who had fallen half fainting into a chair, gathered strength enough to start up and to protest against the words with a frightened, despairing gesture.

As for M. Darzac, his face was a picture of hopeless anguish. He sank upon a couch and said in a voice so low that it was scarcely audible and so full of wretchedness that it pierced our hearts:

“And could you have thought that, Mathilde?”

His wife dropped her eyes and spoke not a word.

Rouletabille, still merciless, continued:

“When I recall all the acts of Mme. Darzac after your return from San Remo, I can see now in each one of them an expression of the terror which she experienced from her fear that she should allow the secret of her suspicion and her constant agony to escape her. Ah, let me speak, M. Darzac! Everything must be said--everything must be explained here and now if there is to be peace in the future! We are about to clear up the situation. To go on then, there was nothing natural or happy in Mlle. Stangerson’s behavior. The very eagerness with which she assented to your desire to hasten the marriage ceremony proved the longing which she felt to definitely banish the torment of her soul. Her eyes--I remember it now!--used to say at that time--how often and how clearly! ‘Is it possible that I continue to see Larsan everywhere, even in the face of the man who is at my side, who is going to lead me to the altar and to take me away with him?’

“From the moment of your return from the South until the apparition at the railroad station, monsieur, she lived in the most utter misery. She was already crying for help--for help against herself--against her thoughts--and, perhaps, even against _you_! But she dared not reveal her thought to any person because she dreaded that any confidant might say to her----”

And Rouletabille leaned over and said in M. Darzac’s ear, not so low that I could not hear, but so softly that the words did not reach Mathilde: “Are you going mad again?”

Then, lifting his head again, he continued:

“You ought to understand everything better now, my dear M. Darzac--both the strange coldness with which you were treated occasionally and also the fits of remorseful tenderness which, in the doubt which filled her brain, would impel Mme. Darzac to surround you with every evidence of attention and affection. And, furthermore, allow me to tell you that I myself have sometimes found you so gloomy and _distrait_ that I have fancied that you must have discovered that whenever Mme. Darzac looked at you, she could not, in spite of herself, chase from her mind the image of Larsan. It came upon her when she spoke to you and when she was silent--when you were beside her and when you were at a distance. And, consequently--let us understand each other completely--it was _not_ the belief that Professor Stangerson’s daughter would have known it, which removed my suspicions, since, in spite of herself, she entertained the fear all the while that you and Larsan were one. No! no! my suspicions were removed by another cause!”

“They might have been removed,” exclaimed M. Darzac, at once ironically and despairingly--“they might have been removed, it would seem, by the simple course of reasoning that if I had been Larsan, wedded to Mlle. Stangerson, having her for my wife, I would have had every cause for making her believe in Larsan’s death! And I would have never resuscitated myself! Was it not upon the day that Larsan returned to earth that I lost Mathilde?”

“Pardon, monsieur, pardon!” replied Rouletabille, whose face had grown as white as a sheet. “You are abandoning now, if I may say so, the directions of pure reason. The facts which you mentioned show us just the contrary of that which you believe we should see. For my part, it seems to me that when one has a wife who believes, or who comes very near to believing, that one is Larsan, one has every interest in showing her that _Larsan exists outside of oneself_!”

As Rouletabille uttered these words, the Lady in Black, supporting herself by groping with her hands against the wall as she walked, came stumblingly to the side of Rouletabille, and devoured with her eyes the face of M. Darzac which had grown frightfully harsh and strained. As to the rest of us, we were so struck by the novelty and the irrefutability of Rouletabille’s reasoning, that we experienced no other emotion than an ardent desire to know what was to follow, and we took care not to interrupt, asking ourselves to what such a formidable hypothesis might not lead. The young man, imperturbably, went on:

“And, if you had an interest in showing her that Larsan existed elsewhere than in your body, there arose an exigency in which that interest was transformed into an immediate necessity. Imagine--I say _imagine_, M. Darzac, that you had really brought Larsan to life once--once only--in spite of yourself--in your own rooms--before the eyes of Professor Stangerson’s daughter--and you will be, I repeat, under the necessity of bringing him to life again and yet again--outside of yourself, in order to prove to your wife that the Larsan whom she has seen returned to life is not you! Ah, calm yourself, my dear M. Darzac, I entreat you. Have I not told you that my suspicion has been banished--completely banished? But it is as well that we should divert ourselves for a few moments in reasoning the matter out a little, after these long hours of anguish when it seemed as though there would never be any place for reasoning again. See, then, where I am obliged to come in considering this hypothesis as realized (these are the procedures of mathematics which you know better than I--you who are a scholar!)--in considering, as I said, as realized the hypothesis that you are the counterfeit Darzac, the one which hides Larsan. According to my reasoning, then, you are Larsan! And I asked myself what could have happened in the railway station at Bourg to make you appear in the form of Larsan before the eyes of your wife. The fact of such an appearance is undeniable. It exists. And its occurrence at that moment cannot be explained by any desire on your part to have Larsan seen!”

He paused for a moment, but Robert Darzac did not utter a word.

“As you were saying, M. Darzac,” Rouletabille went on, “it was because of this apparition of Larsan that your cup of happiness was dashed empty to the ground. Therefore, if this resurrection should not have been voluntary there is only one other way in which it could have happened--through accident. And now just let us consider how this latter supposition clears up the entire situation. Oh, I have spent a lot of thought upon the incident at Bourg!--you see, I am still reasoning out the problem! You (the you who is Larsan, be it understood) are at Bourg in the buffet. You believe that your wife is waiting for you somewhere in the station as she told you she would do. After having finished your letters, you wish to go to your compartment in the car in order to attend to some detail of your toilet--or, shall we say to cast a critical eye over your disguise to see if in any point it might be lacking? You think to yourself: ‘A few more hours of this comedy and we shall have passed the frontier, she will be all my own--entirely alone with me, and I will throw aside this mask’--for the mask wearies you a little, we may imagine--so much so, indeed, that, once arrived in your compartment, you grant yourself the grace of a few moments of repose. You cast away your assumed character and your disguise. You relieve yourself of the false beard and the spectacles--and at that very moment the door of the section opens. Your wife, thrown into a spasm of terror at the sight of Larsan’s smooth, beardless face in the glass, does not wait to make any further investigation and rushes out into the night, her screams drowned by the noise of another train. You comprehend the danger at once. You realize that everything is lost unless you can _immediately_ arrange matters so that your wife shall see Darzac somewhere else. You quickly resume the mask; you hurry out of the compartment and reach the buffet by a shorter route than that taken by your wife, who rushes there to look for you. She finds you standing up. You have not even had time enough to seat yourself before she enters. Is everything safe now? Alas, no! Your troubles are only beginning. For the fearful thought that you may be at one and the same time both Darzac and Larsan will not leave her mind. Upon the platform of the station, while passing beneath the gas jet, she casts a frightened glance at you, lets go your hand and runs wildly into the office of the station master. You read her thought as though she had spoken it. The abominable idea must be banished without a moment’s delay. You quit the office, leaving the lady in the care of the superintendent, and immediately return, closing the door quickly, seeking to give the impression that you, too, have seen Larsan. In order to ease her mind, and, also, for the purpose of deceiving us all, in case she dared reveal her suspicions to any one, you are the first to warn me that something unforeseen has happened--to send me a dispatch. See how clear and plain as the day your every act becomes! You cannot refuse to take her to rejoin her father. She would go without you. And, since nothing is yet really lost, you have the hope that everything may be regained. In the course of the journey, your wife continues to have alternating periods of faith in you and of fear of you. She gives you her revolver, in a sort of half delirium, which might sum itself up in some such phrase as this: ‘If he is Darzac, let him protect me; if he is Larsan, let him kill me! But in pity, let me know which he is.’ At Rochers Rouges, you realized once more how utterly she had withdrawn herself from you and in order to reassure her as to your identity, you showed her Larsan again. * * * See how in accordance with reason such a proceeding would be, my dear M. Darzac! Every fact would fit perfectly into every other under the supposition which I am placing before you. There is not a single point up to your appearance as Larsan at Mentone, during your journey as Darzac to Cannes, at the time when you came to meet us, which cannot be explained in the easiest way imaginable. You had taken the train at Mentone Garavan before the eyes of your friends, but you alighted from the train at the next station, which is Mentone, and there, after a short stay for the purpose of altering your looks, you appeared in the image of Larsan to the same friends who were promenading in the gardens at Mentone. The following train brought you to Cannes, where you met Sainclair and myself. Only, as you had on this occasion the vexation of hearing from the lips of Arthur Rance when he met us at the station at Nice, the news that Mme. Darzac had not, on this occasion, caught sight of Larsan, you were under the necessity that same evening of showing her Larsan under the very windows of the Square Tower, standing erect in the prow of Tullio’s boat. So, you see, my dear M. Darzac, how even those things which appear most complicated would have become entirely simple and logically explicable, if, by chance, my suspicions should have been confirmed.”

At these words, I myself, who had seen and touched “the map of Australia,” was unable to repress a shudder as I looked pityingly at Robert Darzac, just as one might look at some poor man who is on the point of becoming the victim of some hideous judicial error. And all the others, seated around me, shuddered as well, whether for him or on account of him, for the arguments of Rouletabille were becoming so terribly _possible_ that each of us was asking himself how, after having so completely established the possibility of guilt, the young reporter could prove Darzac’s innocence. As to Robert Darzac, after having at first evinced the deepest agitation, he had grown quite tranquil and calm, as he listened attentively to every word that escaped the young man’s lips. And it seemed to me that his eyes held the same expression of astonishment, amazed and frightened, and yet full of breathless interest, which I had seen in the eyes of accused men at the bar of the Assizes when they had heard the Procurer General deliver one of his wonderful disquisitions which almost convinced the prisoners themselves that they were guilty of a crime which sometimes they had never committed.

“But since you no longer have these suspicions, monsieur!” he exclaimed, his intonation singularly calm, in spite of the fact that his voice was raised, “I should be glad to know, after all this exercise of your talent of reasoning, what could have driven them away?”

“In order to have them driven away, monsieur, one thing was essential--an _absolute certitude_! And I found it--a simple but conclusive proof which showed me in a manner complete and undeniable which of the two manifestations of Darzac was in reality Larsan. That proof, monsieur, was, happily, furnished me by yourself at the very moment when you _closed the circle_--the circle in which there had been found the ‘body too many.’!--the time when, after having sworn that which was the truth--that you had drawn the bolt of your apartment as soon as you had entered your sleeping room, _you had lied to us in concealing from us that you had entered that room at six o’clock instead of at five o’clock as Pere Bernier said and as we ourselves could have proved. You were then the only person except myself who knew that the Darzac who had entered at five o’clock and of whom we had spoken to you as yourself was in reality another man. But you said nothing. And you need not pretend that you did not attach any importance to that hour of five o’clock, since it explained everything to you--since it told you that another Darzac than yourself--the true Robert Darzac--had come into the Square Tower at that time. And, after your false expressions of astonishment, how quiet you kept! Your very silence lied to us! And what interest could the true Darzac have in concealing that another Darzac, who might be Larsan, had come in before you had, and was hiding in the Square Tower? Larsan alone_ was the only one who was interested in hiding from us that there was another manifestation of Darzac than the one he himself bore! OF THE TWO MANIFESTATIONS OF DARZAC, THE FALSE MUST HAVE NECESSARILY BEEN THAT ONE WHICH LIED! Thus my suspicions were driven away by certainty. YOU ARE LARSAN! AND THE MAN WHO WAS HIDDEN BEHIND THE PANEL WAS DARZAC!”

“You lie!” shouted the man (I could not even yet believe him to be Larsan), hurling himself upon Rouletabille.

But none of us stirred a finger and Rouletabille, who had lost nothing of his calm demeanor, extended his arm toward the panel and said:

“HE IS BEHIND THE PANEL NOW!”

* * * * *

It was an indescribable scene--a moment never to be forgotten! At the gesture of Rouletabille, the door of the panel swung open, pushed by an invisible hand, just as it had been on that terrible night which had witnessed the mystery of “the body too many.”

And the form of a man appeared. Clamors of surprise, of joy and of terror filled the Square Tower. The Lady in Black uttered a heart rending cry: “Robert! Robert! Robert!”

And it was a cry of joy! Two Darzacs before us so exactly similar that every one of us save the Lady in Black might have been deceived. But her heart told her the truth, even admitting that her reason, notwithstanding the triumphant conclusion of Rouletabille, might have hesitated. Her arms outstretched, her eyes alight with love and joy, she rushed toward the second manifestation of Darzac--the one which had descended from the panel. Mathilde’s face was radiant with new life; her sorrowful eyes which I had so often beheld fixed with sombre gloom upon _that other_, were shining upon this one with a joy as glorious as it was tranquil and assured. It was he! It was he whom she had believed lost--whom she had sought in vain in the visage of the other and had not found there and, therefore, had accused herself, during the weary hours of day and night, of folly which was akin to madness.

As to the man who, up to the last moment I had not believed to be guilty--as to that wretch who, unveiled and tracked to earth, found himself suddenly face to face with the living proof of his crimes, he attempted yet again, one of the daring coups which had so often saved him. Surrounded on every side, he yet endeavored to flee. Then we understood the audacious drama which in the last few moments, he had played for our benefit. When he could no longer have any doubt as to the issue of the discussion which he was holding with Rouletabille, he had had the incredible self control to permit nothing of his emotions to appear, and had also been able to prolong the situation, permitting Rouletabille to pursue at leisure the thread of the argument at the end of which he knew that he would find his doom, but during the progress of which he might discover perchance some means of escape. And he had effected his manœuvres so well that at the moment when we beheld the other Darzac advancing toward us, we could not hinder the imposter from disappearing at one bound within the room which had served as the bedchamber of Mme. Darzac and closing the door violently behind him with a rapidity which was nothing less than marvellous. We only knew that he had vanished when it was too late to stop his flight.

Rouletabille, during the scene which had passed had thought only of guarding the door opening into the corridor and he had not noticed that every movement of the false Darzac, as soon as he realized that he was being convicted of his imposture, had been in the direction of Mme. Darzac’s room. The reporter had attached no importance to these movements, knowing as he did that this room did not offer any way by which Larsan might escape. But, however, when the scoundrel was behind the door which afforded his last refuge, our confusion increased beyond all proportions. One might have thought that we had become suddenly bereft of our senses. We knocked on the door. We cried out. We thought of all his strokes of genius--of his marvellous escapes in the past!

“He will escape us! He will get away from us again!”

Arthur Rance was the most enraged of us all. Mme. Edith, who was clinging to my arm, drove her finger nails into my hand in a paroxysm of nervous fear. None of us paid any heed to the Lady in Black and Robert Darzac who, in the midst of this tempest, seemed to have forgotten everything, even the clamor and confusion around them. Neither one had spoken a word but they were looking into each other’s eyes as though they had discovered another world--the world which is love. But they had not discovered it; they had merely found it again, thanks to Rouletabille.

The latter had opened the door of the corridor and summoned the three domestics to our assistance. They entered with their rifles. But it was axes that were needed. The door was solid and barricaded with heavy bolts. Pere Jacques went out and fetched a beam which served us as a battering ram. Each of us exerted all his strength and, finally, we saw the door beginning to give way. Our anxiety was at its height. In vain, we told ourselves that we were about to enter a room in which there were only walls and barred windows. We expected anything--or, rather, we expected nothing, for in the mind of each and every one of us was the recollection of the disappearances, the flights, the actual “dissolution of matter” which Larsan had brought about in times past and which at this moment haunted us and drove us nearly mad.

When the door had commenced to yield, Rouletabille directed the servants to take up their guns, with the order, however, that the weapons were to be used only in case it should be impossible to capture Larsan living. Then the young reporter set his shoulder to the door with one last powerful effort and as the boards, wrenched from their hinges, fell to the ground, he was the first to enter the room.

We followed him. And behind him, upon the threshold, we all halted, stupefied by the sight which met our eyes. Larsan was there--plainly to be seen by everyone. And this time there was no difficulty in recognizing him. He had removed his false beard; he had put aside his “Darzac mask”; he had resumed once more the pale, clean-shaven face of that Frederic Larsan whom we had known at the Château of Glandier. And his presence seemed to fill the entire room. He was lying back comfortably in an easy chair in the center of the room and was looking at us with his great, calm eyes. His arm was stretched along the arm of the chair. His head was resting on the cushion at the back. One would have said that he was giving us an audience and was waiting for us to make known our business. It seemed to me that I could even discern an ironical smile on his lips.

Rouletabille advanced toward him.

“Larsan,” he said in a voice which was not quite steady, “Larsan, do you give yourself up?”

But Larsan did not reply.

Then Rouletabille touched the man’s face and his hand and we saw that Larsan was dead.

Rouletabille pointed to a ring on the middle finger. The collet was open and showed a hollow cup which was empty. It must have contained a deadly poison.

Arthur Rance put his head against the man’s chest and assured us that all was over. And Rouletabille entreated us to leave him alone in the Square Tower and to try and forget the terrible events which had passed there.

“I will charge myself with everything,” he asserted gravely. “Here is the ‘body too many.’ No one will inquire into the disposition which may be made of it.”

And he gave an order to Walter which Arthur Rance translated into English.

“Walter, bring me the sack which you found at the Castillon yesterday.”

[Illustration: Rouletabille advanced toward him: “Larsan,” he said; “Larsan, do you give yourself up?” But Larsan did not reply.]

Then he made a gesture to which we were all obedient--a gesture of dismissal. And we left the son face to face with the corpse of the father.

* * * * *

The next moment we saw that M. Darzac was swooning and we were obliged to carry him into Old Bob’s sitting room. But it was only a passing faintness and soon he opened his eyes again and smiled at Mathilde when he saw her beautiful face bending over him with the look of dread in which we read the fear of losing her beloved husband at the very moment in which she had, through a chain of circumstances which still remained wrapped in mystery, found him again. He succeeded in convincing her that his life was not in any danger and he added his entreaties to those of Mme. Edith that she would go away for a little while and try to get some rest. When the two women had left us, Arthur Rance and myself turned our attention to our friend, inquiring of him, first of all, in regard to his curious state of health. For how could a man whom all of us had believed to be dead, and who had been, with the death rattle in his throat, tied up in a sack and carried away, have been able to rise again and step down living from the fateful panel? But when we had opened his shirt and discovered the bandage which hid the wound that he bore in his breast, we recognized the fact that this injury, by a chance so rare that one would scarcely believe that it could exist, after having brought about an almost immediate state of coma, was not a very serious one. The ball which had struck Darzac in the midst of the savage fight which he had been obliged to make against Larsan, had planted itself in the sternum, causing a bad external hemorrhage and weakening the entire organism, but, fortunately, suspending none of the vital functions.

As we finished the task of dressing the wound Pere Jacques came to close the door of the parlor which had remained open and I wondered what might be the reason which had led the old man to this precaution until I heard steps in the corridor and a strange noise--the sound that one hears when a body is carried away on a stretcher. And I thought of Larsan and of the sack which was holding now for the second time “the body too many.”

Leaving Arthur Rance to watch over M. Darzac I hurried to the window. I had not been mistaken. I beheld the sinister funeral cortege in the court outside.

It was nearly nightfall. A gathering gloom surrounded everything. But I could distinguish Walter, who had been stationed as a sentinel under the arch of the gardener’s postern. He was looking toward the outer court, ready, evidently, to bar the passage of anyone who might desire to penetrate into the Court of the Bold.

Moving onward in the direction of the oubliette, I saw Rouletabille and Pere Jacques--two dark shadows bending over another shadow--a shadow which I recognized and which, on that other night of horror, I had believed to contain another dead body. The sack seemed heavy. The two men were scarcely able to lift it to the edge of the shaft. And I could see that the little passageway was open--yes, the heavy wooden lid which ordinarily closed it had been removed and was lying on the ground. Rouletabille leaped lightly over the edge of the oubliette and then made a step downward. He showed no hesitation; the way seemed to be familiar to him. In a few moments his figure vanished from sight. Then Pere Jacques pushed the sack into the passageway and leaned over the edge, apparently still holding on to his burden which I could no longer see. Then he stood back, closed up the opening and adjusted the iron bars and in doing so made a sound which I suddenly remembered--the sound which had puzzled me so much that evening when, before the “discovery of Australia,” I had rushed in pursuit of a shadow which had suddenly disappeared and which I had searched for up to the very door of the New Castle.

* * * * *

I felt that I must see--up to the very last moment. I must know all! Too many strange and inexplicable things were filling my soul with anxiety already. I had learned the most important part of the truth, but I had not all of the truth--or, rather, something which would explain the truth was still lacking.

I left the Square Tower; I went to my own room in the New Castle, I stationed myself at the window and my eyes lost themselves in the depths of the shadows which covered the sea. Thick darkness; jealous shadows. Nothing more. And then I strained my ears to listen, although I knew that there was not the faintest sound of the strokes of the oar.

All at once--far--very far off--it seemed to me that all this was passing so far over the sea that it crossed the horizon--or, rather, approached the horizon--I fancied that I could see in the narrow red band which was all that remained of the setting sun something that seemed more unreal than a vision.

Into that narrow red band an object entered--something dark and very small, but to my eyes, which were fixed upon it in breathless suspense, it seemed the greatest and most formidable sight that I had ever beheld. It was the shadow of a fishing smack which glided over the waters as automatically as though it were propelled by machinery and as its movements became slower, and I saw it emerging from the gloom, I recognized the form of Rouletabille. The oars ceased to move and I saw my friend rise to his feet. I could recognize him and see everything which he did as clearly as if he had not been ten yards away from me. His gestures were outlined against the red background of the sunset with a fantastic precision.

What he had to do did not take long. He leaned over and got up again, lifting in his arms something which seemed to mix with his form and become a part of himself in the darkness. And then the burden glided down into the water and the man’s figure reappeared alone, still bending, still leaning over the edge of the boat, remaining thus for an instant motionless, and then once more picking up the oars of the bark which resumed its automatic motion until it had disappeared completely from the dying glare of the ever narrowing band of red. And then the band of red, too, vanished.

Rouletabille had consigned the body of Larsan to the waves of Hercules.

EPILOGUE

Nice--Cannes--Saint-Raphael--Toulon. I saw without regret all the stages of my return trip passing before my eyes. Upon the very day which had followed all the horrible things I have related, I hastened to quit the Midi, anxious to find myself once more in Paris and to plunge into my business affairs--and anxious also to find myself alone with Rouletabille, who was now only a few feet away from me, locked up in a private compartment with the Lady in Black. Up to the very last moment--that is to say, as far as Marseilles, where they were obliged to separate, I was unwilling to interrupt their tender and sorrowful confidences, their plans for the future, their fond farewells. Despite all the prayers of Mathilde Rouletabille was determined to leave her, to return to Paris and to his paper. The son had the superb heroism of effacing himself for the sake of the husband. The Lady in Black had not been able to resist Rouletabille and the boy had dictated exactly what should be done. He had directed that _M. and Mme. Darzac_ must continue their honeymoon trip as if nothing remarkable had happened at Rochers Rouges. It was one Darzac who had begun the journey; it was another Darzac who was to finish it--this trip which had become such a happy one--but in the eyes of all the world Darzac would be the same man without any suspicion that things had ever been otherwise.

M. and Mme. Darzac were married. The civil law united them. As to the religious law, as Rouletabille said, the affair might easily be laid before the Pope while the couple were in Rome and there would, without doubt, be found means of regularizing the situation, if there was found to be need of it or if the conscientious scruples of the couple desired it. And Robert Darzac and his wife were happy--completely happy. They belonged to each other.

At Rochers Rouges--at the “Louve” itself, we had said adieu to Professor Stangerson. Robert Darzac had departed immediately for Bordighera, where Mathilde was to join him. Arthur Rance and Mme. Edith accompanied us to the railroad station. My charming hostess, contrary to my hope, evinced no great amount of concern at my departure. I attributed this indifference to the fact that Prince Galitch had come to the quay to see us off. Mme. Edith was giving him the latest bulletin from Old Bob’s bedside (which was excellent, by the way), and paid no further attention to me. I felt a real pang of--was it grief or wounded self love? And here and now, I have a confession to make to the reader. Never would I have allowed myself to betray the sentiments which I had entertained toward her, if, several years later, after the death of Arthur Rance, which was surrounded and followed by a most terrible tragedy of which I may relate the history one day, I had not married the dark eyed, melancholy, romantic Edith!

* * * * *

We were approaching Marseilles.

Marseilles!

The farewells were heartrending, although neither Rouletabille nor the Lady in Black uttered a word.

And as the train bore us away we saw her standing on the platform in the station, without a movement or gesture, her arms hanging at her side, looking in her sombre draperies like a statue of mourning and of sorrow.

I saw in front of me Rouletabille’s shoulders shaken with sobs.

* * * * *

Lyons. We could not sleep. We alighted from the train and walked about the station. Both of us recalled the moment when we had been there before--only a few days past--when we were rushing to the rescue of the most unhappy of women. My thoughts plunged once more into the memories of the tragedy and I knew that Rouletabille’s were following the same track. And now Rouletabille spoke--spoke in a voice which he tried to make sound careless and light hearted and which made me understand that he was endeavoring to efface from his mind the thought of the grief which had made him sob like a little child only a short while ago.

“Old man!” he said, with a smile, throwing his arm across my shoulder. “That Brignolles was really a beast!” and he looked at me with such an air of reproach that he almost succeeded in making me believe for a moment that I had ever taken the creature for an honest man.

And then he told me everything--all the marvellous, horrible story which I am compressing here into a few lines. Larsan had had need of some relative of Darzac in order that he might obtain the necessary signature for the incarceration of the Sorbonne professor in a madhouse. And he discovered Brignolles. He could not have fallen upon a better man for his purpose. Everyone knows how simple it is, even to-day, to have a human being, no matter who he may be, locked up in a cell. The desire of a relative and the signature of a medical man is sufficient in France, impossible as the thing appears, for the accomplishment of this task which may be performed with the utmost celerity. The matter of a signature never embarrassed Larsan in his life. He forged one--that of an eminent alienist--and Brignolles, richly reimbursed, charged himself with the rest. When Brignolles came to Paris, he was already a party to the combination. Larsan had formed his plan--to take Darzac’s place before the wedding. The accident to the young professor’s eyes had been, as I had believed from the first, the result of design. Brignolles had been directed to manage in some manner so that Darzac’s eyes might be sufficiently injured that Larsan, when he took his place, might have in his trickery the important adjunct of dark spectacles, or, failing spectacles, which one cannot wear always, the right to sit in the shadow without arousing suspicion.

The departure of Darzac for the Midi must have strangely facilitated the plans of the two villains. It was not until the end of his sojourn at San Remo that Darzac had been, by the efforts of Larsan who had never ceased to spy upon him, actually dragged to the lunatic asylum. He had been assisted materially in this affair by that “special police force” which has nothing to do with police officials and which puts itself at the disposal of families in certain disagreeable cases which demand as much discretion as rapidity in their execution.

One day M. Darzac was taking a walk in the mountains. The asylum was not far away--in fact, only a few steps from the Italian frontier--and every preparation for the reception of “the unfortunate man” had been made some time beforehand. Brignolles, before leaving for Paris at all, had made arrangements with the proprietor and had presented to him his proofs of relationship, and his representative--Larsan himself. There are certain directors of such institutions who do not ask for explanations, provided that the provisions of the law are complied with--and that one pays well. And both these conditions were easily carried out. And such things are done every day!

“But how did you find out all these things?” I demanded of Rouletabille.

“You remember, my friend,” the reporter replied, “that little piece of paper which you brought back to the Château of Hercules on the day when, without giving me any warning, you took it upon yourself to follow the trail of the excellent Brignolles, who had come to make a short stay in the Midi? That bit of paper, which bore the heading of the Sorbonne and the two syllables, _bonnet_, gave me the most important assistance. First of all, the circumstances under which you found it--you recollect that you picked it up after you had seen Larsan and Brignolles?--rendered it precious to me. And then the place where it had been thrown was nearly a revelation for me when I began to take up the search for the real Darzac, after I had gained the conviction that his was ‘the body too many’ which had been tied up in the sack and carried out in it.”

And Rouletabille went on in the simplest manner possible, taking me in his narrative over the different phases necessary for my comprehension of the mysteries which, up to that time, had remained so inexplicable to every one of us. The first step in his reasoning had come from the conclusions which he had drawn from the fact that the paint on the drawing would dry less than fifteen minutes after it had been laid on, and following that, the other formidable fact that a lie must have been told by one of the two manifestations of Darzac. Bernier, under the cross examination to which Rouletabille subjected him before the return of the man who had carried the sack, had reported the lying words of the man whom everyone had believed to be Darzac. That was what had astonished Bernier--that the man who had come in at six o’clock had not told him that the man who had entered at six o’clock _was not he_! He was trying to conceal the fact that there existed a second manifestation of Darzac and he would have had no interest in concealing it, if his own personality had been the true one. That was clear as the light of day! When the horror of the thing dawned upon Rouletabille, he nearly swooned. His limbs refused to support him; his teeth chattered; everything grew black in front of his eyes. But he was not entirely without hope, even yet. Bernier might have been mistaken. Perhaps he had not correctly understood the words which M. Darzac had spoken in his amazement and confusion! Rouletabille decided that he himself would question M. Darzac. Then he would soon see. How he longed for his return! It would be for M. Darzac himself to “close the circle.” He waited impatiently--and when Darzac returned how the young reporter’s feeble hopes were crushed! “Did you look at the man’s face?” he had asked; and when the so-called Darzac replied, “No--I did not look at him!” Rouletabille could hardly hide his joy. It would have been so easy for Larsan to have answered, “I saw him. The face was that of Larsan!” And the young man had not understood that this was the last piece of malice--the furthest limit of hatred in the mind of the villain--and, too, one which fitted so well into his role. The real Darzac would not have acted otherwise. He would have gotten rid of his frightful booty as soon as possible without wishing to look at it. But what could all the artifices of a Larsan accomplish against the reasonings of a Rouletabille? The false Darzac, under the questionings of Rouletabille had “closed the circle.” He had lied. Now Rouletabille _knew_! And besides his eyes, which always looked _behind_ the reason, could see now.

But what was to be done? Could he expose Larsan immediately and, perhaps, give him a chance to escape? Could he reveal to his mother the fact that she was married to Larsan and had helped him to kill Darzac? No--a thousand times no! He felt the need of reflection--of combining circumstances and possibilities. He wished to strike a sure blow when he was ready to strike at all. He asked for twenty-four hours. He made sure of the safety of the Lady in Black by begging her to take the unoccupied room in Professor Stangerson’s suite and he made her take a secret oath that she would not leave the château. He deceived Larsan by making him think that he was firmly convinced of the guilt of Old Bob. And when Walter rushed into the château with his empty sack the first gleam of hope that Darzac might still be alive dawned upon his mind. At last, he rushed off to find him, dead or living. He had in his possession the revolver belonging to the real Darzac which he had found in the Square Tower--a new revolver of which he had noticed the style in a shop at Mentone. He went to that shop; he showed the clerk the revolver; he learned that the weapon had been purchased a few days before by a man of whom he was given a description--a soft hat, a loose gray overcoat and a heavy beard. From there he lost all trace of the man, but he was not discouraged. He took up another trail, or, rather, he resumed that one which had led Walter to the gulfs of Castillon. When he arrived there, he did what Walter had not done. The latter, as soon as he had found the sack, looked for nothing more but hurried back to the Fort of Hercules. But Rouletabille, on the contrary, continued to follow the scent--and he perceived that this scent (which consisted of the exceptional clearness of the impressions left by the two wheels of the little English cart) instead of going back toward Mentone, after having stopped at the abyss of Castillon, went toward the other side, crossing by the mountain toward Sospel. Sospel! Had not Brignolles been reported as having gone to Sospel? Brignolles! Rouletabille remembered my sudden and interrupted journey. What could Brignolles be doing in these parts? His presence might be closely allied to the solution of the mystery. Certainly, the reappearance and disappearance of the true Darzac suggested the idea that he must have been kept somewhere in confinement. But where? Brignolles, who was undoubtedly in the confidence of Larsan, had not made the journey from Paris for nothing. Perhaps he had come at that critical moment to watch over this place of confinement. Meditating thus and pursuing the logical tenor of his reasoning, Rouletabille had questioned the landlord of the inn near the Castillon tunnel, who had acknowledged to him that he had been very much puzzled the day before by the passage through the tunnel of a man who perfectly answered the description which had been given by the gunsmith. This man had entered the tavern to drink. His manner and appearance were so strange that the landlord had feared that he might have escaped from the sanitarium. Rouletabille felt that he was on the right track and asked as indifferently as he could, “You have a sanitarium near here then?” “Oh, yes,” replied the landlord; “the Mount Barbonnet sanitarium for mental diseases.” It was at this point that the memory of the two syllables “bonnet” flashed in full significance upon the brain of Rouletabille. Henceforth, he had no longer any doubt that the real Darzac had been immolated by the false one as a madman in the sanitarium of Mount Barbonnet. He was resolved to know everything and to venture everything! He was certain that as a reporter of the Epoch he possessed the means of loosening the tongue of proprietors of sanitariums of the kind which take college professors as patients and ask no questions. He hired a carriage and had himself driven to Sospel, which is at the foot of the mountains. He realized that he was running the chance of encountering Brignolles. But, fortunately, nothing of the kind happened and the young man reached Mount Barbonnet and the sanitarium in safety. His mind was filled now with the thought that he was at last--definitely--to learn what had become of Robert Darzac! For at the moment that the sack had been found without the corpse--from the moment that the tracks of the little carriage descended toward Sospel or elsewhere and lost themselves; from the moment that he had discovered that Larsan had not considered it prudent to relieve himself of Darzac by throwing him in the sack into one of the gulfs of Castillon, Rouletabille had believed that Larsan might have found it to his interest to return the living Darzac to the madhouse at Sospel. And the reasoning powers of Rouletabille showed him that this might well be so. Darzac living might be more useful to Larsan than Darzac dead. What hostage would he have otherwise on the day when Mathilde should discover his imposture?

And Rouletabille had guessed aright. At the very door of the asylum, he had encountered Brignolles. Immediately, without warning, he had seized him by the throat and threatened him with his revolver. Brignolles was a coward. He entreated Rouletabille to spare him, vowing that Darzac was living. A quarter of an hour later Rouletabille knew the whole story. But the revolver had not sufficed, for Brignolles, who feared and hated the thought of death, loved life and everything which renders life desirable, particularly money. Rouletabille had not much trouble to convince him that he was lost if he did not betray Larsan and that he had much to gain if he helped the Darzac family to extricate itself from the present situation without scandal. At the close of the interview, both men entered the institution and were there received by the director, who listened to what they had to say with an amazement which was soon transformed into terror and later to the greatest affability which showed itself in immediate preparations for the release of Robert Darzac.

Darzac, by the miraculous chance which I have already explained, had sustained only a very slight injury from a wound which might easily have been mortal. Rouletabille, almost wild with joy, took him at once to Mentone. I will pass over the transports of both the rescuer and the rescued. They had disposed of Brignolles by agreeing to meet him in Paris for the settling of the accounts. On the journey, Rouletabille learned from the lips of Darzac that the Sorbonne Professor in his prison had a few days before happened to see the newspaper which spoke of the fact that M. and Mme. Darzac, whose wedding had just taken place in Paris, were guests at the Fort of Hercules. He had no further to look in order to comprehend why all his misfortunes had taken place and it was not difficult to guess who had had the fantastic audacity to take his place at the side of the unfortunate woman whose still wavering mind would have rendered so wild an enterprise not impossible. This discovery seemed to give him strength which he had not guessed that he possessed. After having stolen the overcoat of the director in order to conceal his asylum garb and having found a purse containing an hundred francs in the pocket, he had succeeded, at the risk of his life, in scaling a wall which under any other circumstances he would certainly have found insurmountable, and he had gone to Mentone. He had hastened to the Fort of Hercules. And he had seen Darzac with his own eyes! He had seen his very self. He spent a few hours in making himself so like his double in dress and appearance that the other Darzac himself might have been puzzled to find out which was which. His plan was simple. He would make his way into the Fort of Hercules in his own proper person--would enter the apartment of Mathilde and show himself to the other man in Mathilde’s presence, confounding him with the truth. He had questioned the people of the coast and had learned that the Darzacs’ suite was located at the back part of the Square Tower. “The Darzacs’ suite”! All that he had suffered up to that time seemed like nothing in comparison with what he felt at those words. And this suffering had been without surcease until he had seen with his own eyes, at the time of the corporeal demonstration of the possibility of the “body too many,” the Lady in Black. Then he had understood all. Never would she have dared to look at him like that, never would have so joyously flown to the refuge of his arms, if for a single instant, in body or in spirit, she had been the victim of the machinations of that other man and had belonged to him as his wife. Robert Darzac and Mathilde had been separated--but they had never lost each other!

Before putting his project into execution, Darzac had purchased a revolver at Mentone, had disembarrassed himself of his overcoat which he had managed to lose, believing that it would be a means of identification, had procured a suit of clothes which in color and in cut was the counterpart of that worn by the other Darzac and had waited until five o’clock--the hour at which he had resolved to act. He had hidden himself behind the Villa Lucie, high up on the boulevard at Garavan, at the top of a little hillock from which he could see plainly all that was passing in the château. When he had passed by us and we had both seen him he had had a fierce desire to cry out and tell us who he was, but he had strength of mind enough to contain himself, desiring to be recognized first of all by the Lady in Black. This hope alone sustained his steps. This only was worth the trouble of living and an hour afterward, when he had had the life of Larsan at his disposal while the latter sat in the same room with his back turned to him, writing letters, he had not even been tempted by the idea of vengeance. After so many sorrows, there was no room in Robert Darzac’s heart for hatred of Larsan; it was too full of love for the Lady in Black. Poor dear pitiful M. Darzac!

We know the rest of the adventure. That which I did not know was the way in which the true M. Darzac had penetrated a second time into the Fort of Hercules and had obtained entrance a second time into the recess hidden by the panel. And Rouletabille told me how on the same night that he had taken M. Darzac to Mentone, he had learned through the flight of Old Bob that there existed an entrance to the castle through the oubliette and so he had, by the help of a little boat, smuggled M. Darzac into the château by the way which Old Bob had taken in going out. Rouletabille wished to be master of the hour when he came to confound Larsan and strike him down. On that night it was too late to act, but he felt that he could count upon finishing up the affair on the night following. The only thing was how to hide M. Darzac on the peninsula. And with the aid of Bernier, he had found him a quiet, deserted little corner in the New Château.

At this point of the narrative, I could not hinder myself from interrupting Rouletabille with a cry which had the effect of sending him into a burst of laughter.

“It was really he then!” I exclaimed.

“It really was!” answered my friend.

“That was how I was able to find the ‘map of Australia’! It was the true Darzac with whom I stood face to face that night! And I who understood nothing that was going on! For it was not only the ‘Australia’--it was the beard as well. And it did not come off--it was natural! Oh, now, I understand everything!”

“You’ve taken time enough about it!” replied Rouletabille, tranquilly. “That night, old fellow, you caused us a lot of trouble. When you made your appearance in the Court of the Bold, M. Darzac had come to take me back to my underground passage. I had only time enough to close the wooden lid above my head, while M. Darzac rushed back to the New Castle. But when you had retired, after your experience with the beard, he came back to me and we were bothered enough, I assure you. If, by chance, you should speak of this adventure upon the morrow to the other M. Darzac, believing that he was the same man you had seen in the New Château, there would be a catastrophe. But I dared not yield to the pleadings of M. Darzac, who begged me to go to you and tell you the whole truth. I was afraid that, knowing how matters stood, you would be unable to hide your feelings during the following day. You have a rather impulsive nature, Sainclair, and the sight of a bad man usually arouses in you a praiseworthy irritation which at such a moment might have ruined us. And then, the other Darzac was so cunning and so clever! I resolved to bring about the climax without saying anything to you! I would return to the château the next morning. And from that time on it was necessary to manage things so that you should not speak to Darzac. That was why, as soon as it was daylight, I sent you word to go fishing for brook trout----”

“Oh, I understand!”

“You always finish by understanding, Sainclair! I hope that you have forgiven me for that fault which gave you such a charming hour with Mme. Edith!”

“Apropos of Mme. Edith, why did you take such a mischievous pleasure in putting me into such a fit of anger?” I demanded.

“In order to have the right to abuse you and to forbid you to speak henceforward, one word to me _or to M. Darzac_! I repeat to you that, after your adventure of the night before, it would not have done to let you talk to M. Darzac. Try to understand the position, Sainclair!”

“I’ll try, my friend!”

“Much obliged!”

“And still there is one thing that I don’t understand!” I exclaimed. “The death of Pere Bernier. Who killed Bernier?”

“It was the cane!” said Rouletabille, gloomily. “It was that damned cane!”

“I thought that it was ‘the oldest dagger known to humanity.’”

“It was both of them; the cane and the flint. But it was the cane which decided his death; the stone was only his executioner.”

I stared at Rouletabille, asking myself whether, this time, I had not come to the end of his intelligence.

“You never understood, Sainclair--among other things--why upon the morrow of the day on which I had come to comprehend everything, I had let fall Arthur Rance’s ivory-headed cane in front of M. and Mme. Darzac. It was because I hoped that M. Darzac would pick it up. You remember, Sainclair, the ivory-headed cane which Larsan used to carry and the gestures he was in the habit of making with it while we were at the Glandier? He had a fashion of holding his cane which was all his own. I wanted to see whether Darzac would hold an ivory-headed cane as Larsan had used to do. And this fixed idea pursued me until the morrow, even after my visit to the insane asylum. Even after I had seen and felt the true Darzac, I longed to see the imposter make the gestures of Larsan. Ah, to see him suddenly brandish his cane like a bandit--forget the disguise of his figure for one single moment! throw back his falsely stooped shoulders. ‘Knock it, please! Knock at the shield of the Mortolas with heavy blows of the cane, dear, dear M. Darzac!’ And he knocked it--and I saw his form--erect--undisguised! And another man saw it and he is dead! It was poor Bernier, who was so horrified at the sight that he stumbled and fell so unfortunately on the ‘oldest dagger’ that the wound killed him. He is dead because he picked up the flint which, doubtless, had fallen out of Old Bob’s overcoat and which Bernier had intended to take to the workshop of the Professor in the Round Tower! He is dead, because at the same moment that he picked up the flint he saw Larsan brandishing his cane--saw the scoundrel’s figure and his gestures! All battles, Sainclair, have their innocent victims!”

We were both silent for a moment. And I could not keep myself from mentioning the bitterness which I felt at the knowledge that he had had so little confidence in me. I could not pardon him for having deceived me as he had done everyone else in regard to Old Bob.

He smiled.

“That was something that didn’t bother me at all. I was certain enough that he was not in the sack! However on the night before he was fished out of the grotto after I had hidden the true Darzac, under the guidance of Bernier, in the New Château, and had left the gallery of the underground passage after having left there my boat in readiness for my projects of the morrow--my boat which had belonged to Paolo, a fisherman, and a friend of ‘the Hangman of the Sea,’ I regained the bank by my oars. I was undressed and carried my clothing in a package on my head. As I went on, I met Paolo who was amazed to see me taking a bath at such an hour and invited me to go fishing with him. I accepted. And then I learned that the bark which I had used belonged to Tullio. The ‘Hangman of the Sea’ had suddenly become rich and had announced to everyone that he was about to return to his native country. He said that he had sold some precious shells to the old professor for a very great deal of money and, in fact, for many days past, he had been seen a great deal in ‘the old professor’s’ company. Paolo knew that before going to Venice, Tullio intended to stop at San Remo. When I heard all this, I had a clear insight into Old Bob’s behavior and disappearance. He had needed a boat in quitting the château and this boat was that of the ‘Hangman of the Sea.’ I asked him for the address of Tullio in San Remo and sent it to Arthur Rance in an anonymous letter. Rance started for San Remo, believing that Tullio could inform him as to the fate of Old Bob. And, in fact, Old Bob had paid Tullio to take him to the grotto and then to disappear. It was out of pity for the old savant that I had decided to warn Arthur Rance; for I feared that some accident might have befallen his relative. As for myself, all that I could ask was that the old dandy would not put in an appearance before I had finished with Larsan, for I wanted the false Darzac to believe that Old Bob was occupying my mind to the exclusion of everything else. And when I learned that he really had returned, I was, at first, only half pleased, but I confess that the news of the wound in his breast (because of the wound in the breast of the man in the sack) did not cause me any pain at all. Thanks to that injury, I might hope to continue my game a few hours longer.”

“And why should you not have abandoned it immediately?”

“Don’t you understand that it would have been impossible for me to have gotten rid of the body of Larsan in the daylight? A whole day was necessary to prepare for the disappearance by night. But what a day we had with the death of Bernier! The arrival of the gendarmes only served to simplify the affair. I waited until I knew that they were gone. The first rifle shot that you heard when we were in the Square Tower was to inform me that the last gendarme had quitted the tavern at Albo, at the Point of Garibaldi; the second told me that the customs officers had gone into their cabins and were at supper and that _the sea was free_!”

“Tell me, Rouletabille,” I said, looking into his clear eyes. “When you left Tullio’s boat at the end of the gallery of the passageway, for the carrying out of your plans, did you know already _what that boat would carry away on the morrow_?”

Rouletabille bowed his head.

“No,” he answered, sadly and slowly. “No--do not think that, Sainclair! I did not expect that it would carry away a corpse. After all--he was my father! _I believed that the boat would carry the ‘body too many’ to the madhouse!_ You understand, Sainclair? I would only have condemned him to prison--forever. But he killed himself. It is God who did it. May God forgive him!”

We never spoke again of that night.

At Laroche I was anxious for a hot supper, but Rouletabille refused to join me. He bought all the Paris papers and buried himself in the events of the day. The journals were filled with news from Russia. A great conspiracy against the Czar had been discovered at St. Petersburg. The facts related were so wonderful that they were almost incredible.

I unfolded the Epoch and I read in great black letters on the first column of the first page:

“DEPARTURE OF JOSEPH ROULETABILLE FOR RUSSIA.”

And underneath:

“THE CZAR IMPLORES HIS AID.”

I passed the paper to Rouletabille, who shrugged his shoulders and said: “That’s a nice thing! Without even asking my opinion! What does that fool of an editor think that I am going to do out there? I’m not interested in the Czar. Let him and his Nihilists settle their squabbles for themselves! It is their affair, not mine! To Russia? I shall apply for a vacation--that’s what I’ll do! I need rest. I’ll tell you, Sainclair, you and I will go somewhere together. We’ll take a nice, quiet rest----”

“Not if I know it!” I cried hastily. “Thanks very much but I have had enough of your kind of ‘nice, quiet rest’! I have a wild desire to work!”

“Just as you like. I won’t insist.”

As we drew nearer Paris, he bathed his hands and face, combed his hair and turned out his pockets. And in one of them he was surprised to find a red envelope which had come there without anyone knowing how.

“What nonsense is this?” he remarked carelessly, tearing it open.

Then he burst into a peal of laughter. I had found my gay Rouletabille again and I was anxious to know the reason for this hilarity.

“Why, I’m going, old man!” he exclaimed. “I’m going to start immediately! When things begin to come like this, it’s a little different. I shall take the train to-night.”

“Where to?”

“To St. Petersburg.”

He handed me the letter and I read:

“We know, monsieur, that your paper has decided to send you to Russia, on account of the incidents which are at this time disturbing the court of Turkoie-Selo. _We are obliged to warn you that you will not reach St. Petersburg alive._

“(Signed)

“THE CENTRAL REVOLUTIONARY COMMITTEE.”

I looked at Rouletabille, whose eyes were shining with delight. “Prince Galitch was at the station,” I remarked. He understood me and shrugging his shoulders indifferently, he repeated:

“Ah, now, old fellow, this begins to be amusing!”

And this was all that I could get out of him, in spite of my protestations. And that night when, at the Northern station, I put my arms around him and begged him not to go, the tears in my eyes as I spoke--he laughed again and repeated:

“This is just beginning to be amusing!”

And that was his farewell.

The following day I took up the work which was waiting for me at the Palace. The first of my colleagues whom I saw were MM. Henri-Robert and Andre Hesse.

“Did you have a pleasant holiday?” they asked me.

“Delightful!” I responded.

But I made such a grimace as I spoke that they both dragged me off to take a drink with them.

THE END

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=The God of Clay=

_By_ H. C. BAILEY

With illustrations by ALEC C. BALL

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=THE MYSTERY OF THE YELLOW ROOM=

_By_ GASTON LEROUX

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=Lafcadio Hearn=

Letters from the Raven

Being the Correspondence of

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=TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES=

Obvious typographical errors have been silently corrected.

Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.

Unicode prime characters and lack of accent in the French words have been kept as in the original version.