which overrides all others
--curiosity."

The detective smiled, and continued:

"There are people who have a mania for the theatre. It is like my
own mania. Only, I can't understand how people can take pleasure
in the wretched display of fictions, which are to real life what
a tallow dip is to the sun. It seems to me monstrous that people
can be interested in sentiments which, though well represented, are
fictitious. What! can you laugh at the witticisms of a comedian,
whom you know to be the struggling father of a family? Can you
pity the sad fate of the poor actress who poisons herself, when you
know that on going out you will meet her on the boulevards? It's
pitiable!"

"Let's shut up the theatres," suggested Dr. Gendron.

"I am more difficult to please than the public," returned M. Lecoq.
"I must have veritable comedies, or real dramas. My theatre is
--society. My actors laugh honestly, or weep with genuine tears.
A crime is committed--that is the prologue; I reach the scene,
the first act begins. I seize at a glance the minutest shades of
the scenery. Then I try to penetrate the motives, I group the
characters, I link the episodes to the central fact, I bind in a
bundle all the circumstances. The action soon reaches the crisis,
the thread of my inductions conducts me to the guilty person; I
divine him, arrest him, deliver him up. Then comes the great scene;
the accused struggles, tries tricks, splits straws; but the judge,
armed with the arms I have forged for him, overwhelms the wretch;
he does not confess, but he is confounded. And how many secondary
personages, accomplices, friends, enemies, witnesses are grouped
about the principal criminal! Some are terrible, frightful, gloomy
--others grotesque. And you know not what the ludicrous in the
horrible is. My last scene is the court of assize. The prosecutor
speaks, but it is I who furnished his ideas; his phrases are
embroideries set around the canvas of my report. The president
submits his questions to the jury; what emotion! The fate of my
drama is being decided. The jury, perhaps, answers, 'Not guilty;'
very well, my piece was bad, I am hissed. If 'Guilty,' on the
contrary, the piece was good, I am applauded, and victorious. The
next day I can go and see my hero, and slapping him on the shoulder,
say to him, 'You have lost, old fellow, I am too much for you!'"

Was M. Lecoq in earnest now, or was he playing a part? What was
the object of this autobiogr