“Then you must know that one day about forty-five years ago, Father Tringlot, the manager of a traveling acrobatic company, was going from Guingamp to Saint Brieuc, in Brittany.  He had with him two large vehicles containing his wife, the necessary theatrical paraphernalia, and the members of the company.  Well, soon after passing Chatelaudren, he perceived something white lying by the roadside, near the edge of a ditch.  ‘I must go and see what that is,’ he said to his wife.  He stopped the horses, alighted from the vehicle he was in, went to the ditch, picked up the object he had noticed, and uttered a cry of surprise.  You will ask me what he had found?  Ah! good heavens!  A mere trifle.  He had found your humble servant, then about six months old.”

With these last words, the prisoner made a low bow to his audience.

“Naturally, Father Tringlot carried me to his wife.  She was a kind-hearted woman.  She took me, examined me, fed me, and said:  ’He’s a strong, healthy child; and we’ll keep him since his mother has been so wicked as to abandon him by the roadside.  I will teach him; and in five or six years he will be a credit to us.’  They then asked each other what name they should give me, and as it happened to be the first day of May, they decided to call me after the month, and so it happens that May has been my name from that day to this.”

The prisoner paused again and looked from one to another of his listeners, as if seeking some sign of approval.  None being forthcoming, he proceeded with his story.

“Father Tringlot was an uneducated man, entirely ignorant of the law.  He did not inform the authorities that he had found a child, and, for this reason, although I was living, I did not legally exist, for, to have a legal existence it is necessary that one’s name, parentage, and birthplace should figure upon a municipal register.

“When I grew older, I rather congratulated myself on Father Tringlot’s neglect.  ‘May, my boy,’ said I, ’you are not put down on any government register, consequently there’s no fear of your ever being drawn as a soldier.’  I had a horror of military service, and a positive dread of bullets and cannon balls.  Later on, when I had passed the proper age for the conscription, a lawyer told me that I should get into all kinds of trouble if I sought a place on the civil register so late in the day; and so I decided to exist surreptitiously.  And this is why I have no Christian name, and why I can’t exactly say where I was born.”

If truth has any particular accent of its own, as moralists have asserted, the murderer had found that accent.  Voice, gesture, glance, expression, all were in accord; not a word of his long story had rung false.

“Now,” said M. Segmuller, coldly, “what are your means of subsistence?”

By the prisoner’s discomfited mien one might have supposed that he had expected to see the prison doors fly open at the conclusion of his narrative.  “I have a profession,” he replied plaintively.  “The one that Mother Tringlot taught me.  I subsist by its practise; and I have lived by it in France and other countries.”