“I am innocent!  God knows I am innocent!” he cried out.  But of what use was his anger?

Two strangers, who were passing, stopped to look at him, and said, pityingly, “He is crazy.”

The Seine was at his feet.  A thought of suicide crossed his mind.

“No,” he said, “no!  I have not even the right to kill myself.  No:  I will not die until I have vindicated my innocence!”

Often, day and night, had Prosper repeated these words, as he walked his cell.  With a heart filled with a bitter, determined thirst for vengeance, which gives a man the force and patience to destroy or wear out all obstacles in his way, he would say, “Oh! why am I not at liberty?  I am helpless, caged up; but let me once be free!”

Now he was free; and, for the first time, he saw the difficulties of the task before him.  For each crime, justice requires a criminal:  he could not establish his own innocence without producing the guilty man; how find the thief so as to hand him over to the law?

Discouraged, but not despondent, he turned in the direction of his apartments.  He was beset by a thousand anxieties.  What had taken place during the nine days that he had been cut off from all intercourse with his friends?  No news of them had reached him.  He had heard no more of what was going on in the outside world, than if his secret cell had been a grave.

He slowly walked along the streets, with his eyes cast down dreading to meet some familiar face.  He, who had always been so haughty, would now be pointed at with the finger of scorn.  He would be greeted with cold looks and averted faces.  Men would refuse to shake hands with him.  He would be shunned by honest people, who have no patience with a thief.

Still, if he could count on only one true friend!  Yes:  he was sure of one.  But what friend would believe him when his father, who should have been the last to suspect him, had refused to believe him?

In the midst of his sufferings, when he felt almost overwhelmed by the sense of his wretched, lonely condition, he thought of Gypsy.

He had never loved the poor girl:  indeed, at times he almost hated her; but now he felt a longing to see her.  He wished to be with her, because he knew that she loved him, and that nothing would make her believe him guilty; because he knew that a woman remains true and firm in her faith, and is always faithful in the hour of adversity, although she sometimes fails in prosperity.

On entering the Rue Chaptal, Prosper saw his own door, but hesitated to enter it.

He suffered from the timidity which an honest man always feels when he knows he is viewed with suspicion.

He dreaded meeting anyone whom he knew; yet he could not remain in the street.  He entered.

When the porter saw him, he uttered an exclamation of glad surprise, and said: 

“Ah, here you are at last, monsieur.  I told everyone you would come out as white as snow; and, when I read in the papers that you were arrested for robbery, I said, ’My third-floor lodger a thief!  Never would I believe such a thing, never!’”