“’As Octave heard these words, he raised the loaded gun he held in his hand and fired.  Montlouis fell to the ground, bathed in blood.  We all ran up to him, but he was quite dead, for the charge of shot had penetrated his heart.  I was almost beside myself, but Octave’s despair was terrible to witness.  Tearing his hair, he knelt beside the dead man.  Ludovic, however, maintained his calmness.  “We must say that it was an accident,” observed he quickly.  “Thinking that Montlouis was not near, my master fired into cover.”

“’This was agreed to, and we carefully arranged what we should say.  It was I who went before the magistrate and made a deposition, which was unhesitatingly received.  But, oh, what a fearful day!  My pulse is at eighty, and I feel I shall not sleep all night.  Octave is half mad, and Heaven knows what will become of him.’”

The Count, from the depths of his armchair, listened without apparent emotion to this terrible revelation.  He was quite crushed, and was searching for some means to exorcise the green spectre of the past, which had so suddenly confronted him.  Mascarin never took his eyes off him.  All at once the Count roused himself from his prostration, as a man awakes from a hideous dream.  “This is sheer folly,” cried he.

“It is folly,” answered Mascarin, “that would carry much weight with it.”

“And suppose I were to show you,” returned the Count, “that all these entries are the offspring of a diseased mind?”

Mascarin shook his head with an air of affected grief.  “There is no use, my lord, in indulging in vain hopes.  We,” he continued, wishing to associate himself with the Count, “we might of course admit that the Baron de Clinchain had made this entry in his diary in a moment of temporary insanity, were it not for the painful fact that there were others.  Le me read them.”

“Go on; I am all attention.”

“We find the following, three days later:  ’Oct. 29th, 1842.  I am most uneasy about my health.  I feel shooting pains in all my joints.  The derangement of my system arises entirely from this business of Octave’s.  I had to run the gauntlet of a second court, and the judge’s eyes seemed to look me through and through.  I also saw with much alarm that my second statement differs somewhat from the first one, so I have now learned it by heart.  Ludovic is a sharp fellow, and quite self-possessed.  I would like to have him in my household.  I keep myself shut up in my house for fear of meeting friends who want to hear all the details of the accident.  I believe I may say that I have repeated the story more than a couple of dozen times.’  Now, my lord,” added Mascarin, “what do you say to this?”

“Continue the reading of the extracts.”