“And how, Madame?”

“Oh, not by protestations!”

“How can you expect that a man in my position will lower himself to discuss accusations that rest on an hallucination?”

“Do you believe that I have hallucinations?  If you do, call one of your ‘confreres’ to-morrow in consultation.  If he believes as you do, I will submit; if not, I shall be convinced that I saw clearly, and I shall act accordingly.”

“If you saw clearly, Madame, and I am ready to concede this to you, it proves that there is some one somewhere who is my double.”

“I said this to myself; and it is exactly this idea that made me write to you.  I wished to give you the opportunity of proving that you could not be this man.”

“You will agree that it is difficult for me to admit a discussion on such an accusation.”

“One may find one’s self accused by a concourse of fatal circumstances, and be not less innocent.  Witness the unfortunate boy imprisoned for five months for a crime of which he is not guilty.  And I pass from your innocence as from his, to ask you to prove that the charges against you are false.”

“There are no charges against me.”

“There may be; that depends upon yourself.  Your hair and beard may have been cut at the time of the assassination; in that case it is quite certain that the man I saw was not you, and that I am the victim of an hallucination.  Were they or were they not?”

“They were not; it is only a few days since I had them cut on account of a contagious disease.”

“It may be,” she continued, without appearing to be impressed by this explanation, “that the day of the assassination, at the hour when I saw you, you were occupied somewhere in such a way that you can prove you could not have been in the Rue Sainte-Anne, and that I was the victim of an hallucination.  And again, it may be that at the time your position was not that of a man at the last extremity, forced to crime by misery or ambition, and that consequently you had no interest in committing the crime of a desperate man.  What do I know?  Twenty other means of defence may be in your hands.”

“You cited the example of this poor boy who is imprisoned, although innocent.  Would it not be applicable to me if you did not recognize the error of your eyes or your memory?  Would he not be condemned without your testimony?  Should I not be if I do not find one that destroys your accusation?  And I see no one from whom I can ask this testimony.  Have you thought of the infamy with which such an accusation will cover me?  If I repel it, and I shall repel it, will it not have dishonored me, ruined me forever?”

“It is just because I thought of this that I sent for you, to the end that by an explanation that you would give, it seemed to me, you would prevent me from informing the judge of this suspicion.  This explanation you do not give me; I must now think only of him whose innocence is proved for me, and take his side against him whose guilt is not less proved.  To-morrow I shall inform the judge.”