“I am not that man.  There is some inexplicable mistake in all this, but I have never set foot in the Cafe du Pont-Neuf.  I swear it.  You must accept this statement as positively true.  Besides, it agrees entirely with the retired life which I was leading from necessity and from choice.  And, I repeat, I knew nothing.

“The thunderbolt was unexpected.  And it was precisely for this reason, you must understand, that the shock produced in me an equally unexpected reaction, a state of mind diametrically opposed to my real nature, an outburst of my most savage and primitive instincts.  Remember, Monsieur, that they had laid hands upon what to me was the most sacred thing on earth.  Marie was in prison.  Marie was accused of committing two murders!...  I went mad.

“At first controlling myself, playing a part with the Prefect of Police, then overthrowing every obstacle, shooting Chief Inspector Ancenis, shaking off Sergeant Mazeroux, jumping from the window, I had only one thought in my head—­that of escape.  Once free, I should save Marie.  Were there people in my way?  So much the worse for them.

“By what right did those people dare to attack the most blameless of women?  I killed only one man that day!  I would have killed ten!  I would have killed twenty!  What was Chief Inspector Ancenis’s life to me?  What cared I for the lives of any of those wretches?  They stood between Marie and myself; and Marie was in prison!”

Gaston Sauverand made an effort which contracted every muscle of his face to recover the coolness that was gradually leaving him.  He succeeded in doing so, but his voice, nevertheless, remained tremulous, and the fever with which he was consumed shook his frame in a manner which he was unable to conceal.

He continued: 

“At the corner of the street down which I turned after outdistancing the Prefect’s men on the Boulevard Richard-Wallace, Florence saved me just as I believed that all was lost.  Florence had known everything for a fortnight past.  She learnt the news of the double murder from the papers, those papers which she used to read out to you, and which you discussed with her.  And it was by being with you, by listening to you, that she acquired the opinion which everything that happened tended to confirm:  the opinion that Marie’s enemy, her only enemy, was yourself.”

“But why?  Why?”

“Because she saw you at work,” exclaimed Sauverand, “because it was more to your interest than to that of any one else that first Marie and then I should not come between you and the Mornington inheritance, and lastly—­”

“What?”

Gaston Sauverand hesitated and then said, plainly: 

“Lastly, because she knew your real name beyond a doubt, and because she felt that Arsene Lupin was capable of anything.”

They were both silent; and their silence, at such a moment, was impressive to a degree.  Florence remained impassive under Don Luis Perenna’s gaze; and he was unable to discern on her sealed face any of the feelings with which she must needs be stirred.