tall, robust man present also?" Bousquier
realized that this new person must be included. One shadowy shape after
another, wild, fantastic, started up in his distracted brain, and he
had to let the puppets play, to satisfy his tormentor. To the question
of how the tall, powerful man looked and how he was dressed, he
answered: "Like a gentleman."

And now it was his turn to describe, to vivify the scene of action. On
the large table in Bancal's room there lay, not the bundle of tobacco
for which he had been called, but a corpse. He tried to flee, but the
tall, robust man followed him and threatened him with a pistol.

The magistrate shook his head reproachfully. "With a pistol?" he said.
"Think well, Bousquier, was it not a gun, perhaps? was it not a
double-barreled gun?" "All right," reflected Bousquier, infuriated; "if
they are bent upon a gun, it may just as well have been a gun." He
nodded as if ashamed, and went on to say that, his life being thus
threatened, he was obliged to remain in Bancal's chamber and aid and
abet him. The dead man was wrapped in a linen cloth, bound with ropes,
and placed upon the stretcher. The stretcher was constructed, in
Bousquier's imagination, aided by the turnkey, with the utmost
perfection. When he was about to describe the funeral train, however,
the tortured man lost consciousness, and when, late in the evening, he
was again conducted to the hearing--rarely did the night and the
candle-light in the dreary room fail of their spectral effects--he
unexpectedly denied everything, cried, screamed, and acted as if
completely bereft of his senses. In order to encourage and calm him.
Monsieur Jausion resorted to a measure as bold as it was simple; he
said that Bach and Colard had likewise made a confession, and it was
gratifying that their declarations coincided with those of Bousquier;
if he comported himself sensibly now, he would soon be allowed to leave
the prison.

Bousquier was startled. The longer he reflected, the more profoundly
was he impressed by what he had heard. His face blanched and
he grew cold all over. It was as if a disordered dream were suddenly
turned into a waking reality, or as if a person in a state of
semi-intoxication, recounting the fictitious story of some misfortune
and becoming more and more enmeshed in a web of falsehoods with every
new detail, suddenly learned that everything had actually taken place
as he had related. A peculiar depression took possession