“Yes, sir.”

“Then the murderer must have been quite near on the watch.  He must have known that the fire would bring you out; and he was lying in wait for you.”

“That was and still is my impression,” declared the count.

M. Galpin turned to M. Daubigeon.

“Then,” he said to him, “the murder is the principal fact with which we have to do; and the fire is only an aggravating circumstance,—­the means which the criminal employed in order to succeed the better in perpetrating his crime.”

Then, returning to the count, he said,—­

“Pray go on.”

“When I felt I was wounded,” continued Count Claudieuse, “my first impulse was instinctively to rush forward to the place from which the gun seemed to have been fired at me.  I had not proceeded three yards, when I felt the same pain once more in the shoulder and in the neck.  This second wound was more serous than the first; for I lost my consciousness, my head began to swim and I fell.”

“You had not seen the murderer?”

“I beg your pardon.  At the moment when I fell, I thought I saw a man rush forth from behind a pile of fagots, cross the courtyard, and disappear in the fields.”

“Would you recognize him?”

“No.”

“But you saw how he was dressed:  you can give me a description?”

“No, I cannot.  I felt as if there was a veil before my eyes; and he passed me like a shadow.”

The magistrate could hardly conceal his disappointment.

“Never mind,” he said, “we’ll find him out.  But go on, sir.”

The count shook his head.

“I have nothing more to say,” he replied.  “I had fainted; and when I recovered my consciousness, some hours later, I found myself here lying on this bed.”

M. Galpin noted down the count’s answers with scrupulous exactness:  when he had done, he asked again,—­

“We must return to the details of the attack, and examine them minutely.  Now, however, it is important to know what happened after you fell.  Who could tell us that?”

“My wife, sir.”

“I thought so.  The countess, no doubt, got up when you rose.”

“My wife had not gone to bed.”

The magistrate turned suddenly to the countess; and at a glance he perceived that her costume was not that of a lady who had been suddenly roused from slumber by the burning of her house.

“I see,” he said to himself.

“Bertha,” the count went on to state, “our youngest daughter, who is lying there on that bed, under the blanket, has the measles, and is suffering terribly.  My wife was sitting up with her.  Unfortunately the windows of her room look upon the garden, on the side opposite to that where the fire broke out.”

“How, then, did the countess become award of the accident?” asked the magistrate.

Without waiting for a more direct question, the countess came forward and said,—­