The prisoner’s “that much,” was a contemptuous snap of his finger and thumb.

“And yet I’ve been arrested and treated like an assassin,” he continued.  “When I saw myself interred in that living tomb which you call a secret cell, I grew afraid; I lost my senses.  I said to myself:  ’My boy, they’ve buried you alive; and it is better to die—­to die quickly, if you don’t wish to suffer.’  So I tried to strangle myself.  My death wouldn’t have caused the slightest sorrow to any one.  I have neither wife nor child depending upon me for support.  However, my attempt was frustrated.  I was bled; and then placed in a strait-waistcoat, as if I were a madman.  Mad!  I really believed I should become so.  All night long the jailors sat around me, like children amusing themselves by tormenting a chained animal.  They watched me, talked about me, and passed the candle to and fro before my eyes.”

The prisoner talked forcibly, but without any attempt at oratorical display; there was bitterness but not anger in his tone; in short, he spoke with all the seeming sincerity of a man giving expression to some deep emotion or conviction.  As the magistrate and the detective heard him speak, they were seized with the same idea.  “This man,” they thought, “is very clever; it won’t be easy to get the better of him.”

Then, after a moment’s reflection, M. Segmuller added aloud:  “This explains your first act of despair; but later on, for instance, even this morning, you refused to eat the food that was offered you.”

As the prisoner heard this remark, his lowering face suddenly brightened, he gave a comical wink, and finally burst into a hearty laugh, gay, frank, and sonorous.

“That,” said he, “is quite another matter.  Certainly, I refused all they offered me, and now I will tell you why.  As I had my hands confined in the strait-waistcoat, the jailor tried to feed me just as a nurse tries to feed a baby with pap.  Now I wasn’t going to submit to that, so I closed my lips as tightly as I could.  Then he tried to force my mouth open and push the spoon in, just as one might force a sick dog’s jaws apart and pour some medicine down its throat.  The deuce take his impertinence!  I tried to bite him:  that’s the truth, and if I had succeeded in getting his finger between my teeth, it would have stayed there.  However, because I wouldn’t be fed like a baby, all the prison officials raised their hands to heaven in holy horror, and pointed at me, saying:  ‘What a terrible man!  What an awful rascal!’”

The prisoner seemed to thoroughly enjoy the recollection of the scene he had described, for he now burst into another hearty laugh, to the great amazement of Lecoq, and the scandal of Goguet, the smiling clerk.

M. Segmuller also found it difficult to conceal his surprise.  “You are too reasonable, I hope,” he said, at last, “to attach any blame to these men, who, in confining you in a strait-waistcoat, were merely obeying the orders of their superior officers with the view of protecting you from your own violent passions.”