Positively this threatened to be too much for Henrietta’s mind.

“Ah!  I thought the mean coward would try to get you out of the way, Daniel.  I wrote to you to be careful.”

“And I received your letter, my darling, but too late.  After having missed me twice, the assassin fired at me; and I was in my bed, a ball in my chest, dying.”

“What has become of the murderer?” asked Papa Ravinet.

“He was arrested.”

“Then he confessed?”

“Yes, thanks to the astonishing cleverness of the magistrate who carried on the investigation.”

“What has become of him?”

“He has left Saigon by this time.  They have sent him home to be tried here.”

“And Brevan?”

“I am surprised he has not yet been arrested.  The papers in the case were sent to Paris by a vessel which left a fortnight before I left.  To be sure, ‘The Saint Louis’ may have gotten ahead of her.  At all events, I have in my keeping a letter to the court.”

Papa Ravinet seemed to be almost delirious with joy.  He gesticulated like a madman; he laughed nervously, and almost frightfully, till his sides shook; and at last he said,—­

“I shall see Brevan on the scaffold!  Yes, I shall!”

But from that moment there was an end of that logical order which the old gentleman had so far kept up.  As it always happens with people who are under the influence of some passion, eager to learn what they do not know, and little disposed to tell what they do know, confusion prevailed soon.  Questions crossed each other, and followed, without order or connection.  Answers came at haphazard.  Each wanted to be heard; and all were speaking at once.  Thus the explanations, which, by a little management, might have been given in twenty minutes, took them more than two hours.

At last, after the lapse of this time, and by dint of great efforts, it became possible to ascertain the sum total of the information given by Papa Ravinet, Daniel, and Henrietta.  The truth began to show itself in the midst of this chaos; and the plot of Sarah Brandon and her accomplices appeared in all its hideous outlines.  A plan of striking simplicity, the success of which seemed to have hung upon a hair.  If the old dealer, instead of going down by the backstairs, had taken the front staircase, he would never have heard Henrietta’s agony, and the poor child would have been lost.

If Crochard’s ball had been a few lines nearer the heart, Daniel would have been killed.

And still the old dealer was not quite satisfied.  He hung his lip, and winked with his yellow eyes, as if he wished it to be understood that he was by no means fully convinced, and that there were certain points which required fuller explanation.

“Look here, M. Champcey,” he began at last, “the more I think of it, the more I am convinced that Sarah Brandon had nothing to do with these attempts at assassination, which so nearly made an end of you.  She is too strong in her perversity to stoop to such coarse means, which always leave traces behind, and finally lead to a court of justice.  She always acts alone, when her mind is made up; and her accomplices aid her only unconsciously, so that they can never betray her.”