when you remember that Bourgonef had lost or pretended to have lost his right arm, and was, as I before intimated, far from dexterous with his left.  That no man recently thrown upon the use of a left hand could have written those addresses was too evident.  What, then, was the alternative?  The empty sleeve was an imposture!  At once the old horrible suspicion returned, and this time with tenfold violence, and with damnatory confirmation.

Pressing my temples between my hands, I tried to be calm and to survey the evidence without precipitation; but for some time the conflict of thoughts was too violent.  Whatever might be the explanation, clear it was that Bourgonef, for some purposes, was practising a deception, and had, as I knew, other means of disguising his appearance.  This, on the most favorable interpretation, branded him with suspicion.  This excluded him from the circle of honest men.

But did it connect him with the murder of Lieschen Lehfeldt?  In my thought it did so indubitably; but I was aware of the difficulty of making this clear to anyone else.

VI

FIRST LOVE

If the reader feels that my suspicions were not wholly unwarranted, were indeed inevitable, he will not laugh at me on learning that once more these suspicions were set aside, and the fact—­the damnatory fact, as I regarded it—­discovered by me so accidentally, and, I thought, providentially, was robbed of all its significance by Bourgonef himself casually and carelessly avowing it in conversation, just as one may avow a secret infirmity, with some bitterness, but without any implication of deceit in its concealment.

I was the more prepared for this revulsion of feeling, by the difficulty I felt in maintaining my suspicions in the presence of one so gentle and so refined.  He had come into my room that evening to tell me of his visit to Schwanthaler, and of the sculptor’s flattering desire to make my personal acquaintance.  He spoke of Schwanthaler, and his earnest efforts in art, with so much enthusiasm, and was altogether so charming, that I felt abashed before him, incapable of ridding myself of the dreadful suspicions, yet incapable of firmly believing him to be what I thought.  But more than this, there came the new interest awakened in me by his story; and when, in the course of his story, he accidentally disclosed the fact that he had not lost his arm, all my suspicions vanished at once.

We had got, as usual, upon politics, and were differing more than usual, because he gave greater prominence to his sympathy with the Red Republicans.  He accused me of not being “thorough-going,” which I admitted.  This he attributed to the fact of my giving a divided heart to politics—­a condition natural enough at my age, and with my hopes.  “Well,” said I, laughing, “you don’t mean to take a lofty stand upon your few years’ seniority.  If my age renders it natural, does yours profoundly alter such a conviction?”