It was useless to deny it, equivocate, or seek subterfuges.  The evidence was there, and it was irrefutable.  While appearing to occupy himself solely with the objects lying upon his table, M. Daburon did not lose sight of the prisoner.  Albert was terrified.  A cold perspiration bathed his temples, and glided drop by drop down his cheeks.  His hands trembled so much that they were of no use to him.  In a chilling voice he kept repeating:  “It is horrible, horrible!”

“Finally,” pursued the inexorable magistrate, “here are the trousers you wore on the evening of the murder.  It is plain that not long ago they were very wet; and, besides the mud on them, there are traces of earth.  Besides that they are torn at the knees.  We will admit, for the moment that you might not remember where you went on that evening; but who would believe that you do not know when you tore your trousers and how you frayed your gloves?”

What courage could resist such assaults?  Albert’s firmness and energy were at an end.  His brain whirled.  He fell heavily into a chair, exclaiming,—­“It is enough to drive me mad!”

“Do you admit,” insisted the magistrate, whose gaze had become firmly fixed upon the prisoner, “do you admit that Widow Lerouge could only have been stabbed by you?”

“I admit,” protested Albert, “that I am the victim of one of those terrible fatalities which make men doubt the evidence of their reason.  I am innocent.”

“Then tell me where you passed Tuesday evening.”

“Ah, sir!” cried the prisoner, “I should have to—­” But, restraining himself, he added in a faint voice, “I have made the only answer that I can make.”

M. Daburon rose, having now reached his grand stroke.

“It is, then, my duty,” said he, with a shade of irony, “to supply your failure of memory.  I am going to remind you of where you went and what you did.  On Tuesday evening at eight o’clock, after having obtained from the wine you drank, the dreadful energy you needed, you left your home.  At thirty-five minutes past eight, you took the train at the St. Lazare station.  At nine o’clock, you alighted at the station at Rueil.”

And, not disdaining to employ Tabaret’s ideas, the investigating magistrate repeated nearly word for word the tirade improvised the night before by the amateur detective.

He had every reason, while speaking, to admire the old fellow’s penetration.  In all his life, his eloquence had never produced so striking an effect.  Every sentence, every word, told.  The prisoner’s assurance, already shaken, fell little by little, just like the outer coating of a wall when riddled with bullets.

Albert was, as the magistrate perceived, like a man, who, rolling to the bottom of a precipice, sees every branch and every projecture which might retard his fall fail him, and who feels a new and more painful bruise each time his body comes in contact with them.