“You have yourself found the salvation,” replied Dorsenne.  “It is in your son and your wife.  See them first, and if I can not promise you that you will not suffer any more, you will no longer be tempted by that horrible idea.”  And he pointed to the pistol, which gleamed in the sunlight that entered through the casement.  Then he added:  “And you will have the idea still less when you will have been able to prove ‘de visu’ what those anonymous letters were worth.  Twelve letters in fifteen days, and cuttings from how many papers?  And they claim that we invent heinousness in our books!  If you like, we will search together for the person who can have elaborated that little piece of villany.  It must be a Judas, a Rodin, an Iago—­or Iaga.  But this is not the moment to waste in hypotheses.

“Are you sure of your valet?  You must send him a despatch, and in that despatch the copy of another addressed to Madame Gorka, which your man will send this very evening.  You will announce your arrival for tomorrow, making allusion to a letter written, so to speak, from Poland, and which was lost.  This evening from here you will take the train for Florence, from which place you will set out again this very night.  You will be in Rome again to-morrow morning.  You will have avoided, not only the misfortune of having become a murderer, though you would not have surprised any one, I am sure, but the much more grave misfortune of awakening Madame Gorka’s suspicions.  Is it a promise?”

Dorsenne rose to prepare a pen and paper:  “Come, write the despatch immediately, and render thanks to your good genius which led you to a friend whose business consists in imagining the means of solving insoluble situations.”

“You are quite right,” Boleslas replied, after taking in his hand the pen which he offered to the other, “it is fortunate.”  Then, casting aside the pen as he had the revolver, “I can not.  No, I can not, as long as I have this doubt within me.  Ah, it is too horrible!  I can see them plainly.  You speak to me of my wife; but you forget that she loves me, and at the first glance she would read me, as you did.  You can not imagine what an effort it has cost me for two years never to arouse suspicion.  I was happy, and it is easy to deceive when one has nothing to hide but happiness.  To-day we should not be together five minutes before she would seek, and she would find.  No, no; I can not.  I need something more.”

“Unfortunately,” replied Julien, “I cannot give it to you.  There is no opium to lull asleep doubts such as those horrible anonymous letters have awakened.  What I know is this, that if you do not follow my advice Madame Gorka will not have a suspicion, but certainty.  It is now perhaps too late.  Do you wish me to tell you what I concealed from you on seeing you so troubled?  You did not lose much time in coming from the station hither, and probably you did not look out of your cab twice.  But you were seen.  By whom?  By Montfanon.  He told me so this morning almost on the threshold of the Palais Castagna.  If I had not gathered from some words uttered by your wife that she was ignorant of your presence in Rome, I—­do you hear?—­I should have told her of it.  Judge now of your situation!”