esire to be convicted."

"Then," murmured Ganimard, "it was you that was there? And now you are
here?"

"It is I, always I, only I."

"Can it be possible?"

"Oh, it is not the work of a sorcerer. Simply, as the judge remarked at
the trial, the apprenticeship of a dozen years that equips a man to cope
successfully with all the obstacles in life."

"But your face? Your eyes?"

"You can understand that if I worked eighteen months with Doctor Altier
at the Saint-Louis hospital, it was not out of love for the work. I
considered that he, who would one day have the honor of calling himself
Arsene Lupin, ought to be exempt from the ordinary laws governing
appearance and identity. Appearance? That can be modified at will. For
instance, a hypodermic injection of paraffine will puff up the skin at
the desired spot. Pyrogallic acid will change your skin to that of an
Indian. The juice of the greater celandine will adorn you with the most
beautiful eruptions and tumors. Another chemical affects the growth of
your beard and hair; another changes the tone of your voice. Add to that
two months of dieting in cell 24; exercises repeated a thousand times to
enable me to hold my features in a certain grimace, to carry my head
at a certain inclination, and adapt my back and shoulders to a stooping
posture. Then five drops of atropine in the eyes to make them haggard
and wild, and the trick is done."

"I do not understand how you deceived the guards."

"The change was progressive. The evolution was so gradual that they
failed to notice it."

"But Baudru Desire?" "Baudru exists. He is a poor, harmless fellow whom
I met last year; and, really, he bears a certain resemblance to me.
Considering my arrest as a possible event, I took charge of Baudru and
studied the points wherein we differed in appearance with a view to
correct them in my own person. My friends caused him to remain at the
Depot overnight, and to leave there next day about the same hour as I
did--a coincidence easily arranged. Of course, it was necessary to have
a record of his detention at the Depot in order to establish the fact
that such a person was a reality; otherwise, the police would have
sought elsewhere to find out my identity. But, in offering to them this
excellent Baudru, it was inevitable, you understand, inevitable that
they would seize upon him, and, despite the insurmountable difficulties
of a substitution, they would prefer to believe in a substitution