“Then, dear child, go and read your letter, and solve the riddle,” said M. de Chandore.

When she had left, he said to his companion,—­

“How she loves him!  How she loves this man Jacques!  Sir, if any thing should happen to him, she would die.”

M. Folgat made no reply; and nearly an hour passed, before Dionysia, shut up in her room, had succeeded in finding all the words of which Jacques’s letter was composed.  But when she had finished, and came back to her grandfather’s study, her youthful face expressed the most profound despair.

“This is horrible!” she said.

The same idea crossed, like a sharp arrow, the minds of M. de Chandore and M. Folgat.  Had Jacques confessed?

“Look, read yourself!” said Dionysia, handing them the translation.

Jacques wrote,—­

“Thanks for your letter, my darling.  A presentiment had warned me, and I had asked for a copy of Cooper.

“I understand but too well how grieved you must be at seeing me kept in prison without my making an effort to establish my innocence.  I kept silence, because I hoped the proof of my innocence would come from outside.  I see that it would be madness to hope so any longer, and that I must speak.  I shall speak.  But what I have to say is so very serious, that I shall keep silence until I shall have had an opportunity of consulting with some one in whom I can feel perfect confidence.  Prudence alone is not enough now:  skill also is required.  Until now I felt secure, relying on my innocence.  But the last examination has opened my eyes, and I now see the danger to which I am exposed.

“I shall suffer terribly until the day when I can see a lawyer.  Thank my mother for having brought one.  I hope he will pardon me, if I address myself first to another man.  I want a man who knows the country and its customs.

“That is why I have chosen M. Magloire; and I beg you will tell him to hold himself ready for the day on which, the examination being completed, I shall be relieved from close confinement.

“Until then, nothing can be done, nothing, unless you can obtain that
the case be taken out of M. G-----’s hands, and be given to some one
else.  That man acts infamously.  He wants me to be guilty.  He would
himself commit a crime in order to charge me with it, and there is no
kind of trap he does not lay for me.  I have the greatest difficulty in
controlling myself every time I see this man enter my cell, who was my
friend, and now is my accuser.

“Ah, my dear ones!  I pay a heavy price for a fault of which I have been, until now, almost unconscious.

“And you, my only friend, will you ever be able to forgive me the terrible anxiety I cause you?

“I should like to say much more; but the prisoner who has handed me your note says I must be quick, and it takes so much time to pick out the words!

“J.”

When the letter had been read, M. Folgat and M. de Chandore sadly turned their heads aside, fearing lest Dionysia should read in their eyes the secret of their thoughts.  But she felt only too well what it meant.