ts were baffled!
How much time was being lost, when each minute diminished the chances
of escape! Then the probability of a thousand dangers which had not
occurred to him, entered his mind. What if some friend should
suddenly arrive, expecting his hospitality, as had occurred twenty
times? What if a passer-by on the road should notice a light flying
from room to room? Might not one of the servants return? When he
is in the drawing-room, he thinks he hears someone ring at the gate;
such is his terror, that he lets his candle fall--for I have found
the marks of it on the carpet. He hears strange noises, such as
never before assailed his ears; he thinks he hears walking in the
next room; the floor creaks. Is his wife really dead; will she not
suddenly rise up, run to the window, and scream for help? Beset by
these terrors, he returns to the bedroom, seizes his dagger, and
again strikes the poor countess. But his hand is so unsteady that
the wounds are light. You have observed, doctor, that all these
wounds take the same direction. They form right angles with the
body, proving that the victim was lying down when they were
inflicted. Then, in the excess of his frenzy, he strikes the body
with his feet, and his heels form the contusions discovered by the
autopsy."

M. Lecoq paused to take breath. He not only narrated the drama, he
acted it, adding gesture to word; and each of his phrases made a
scene, explained a fact, and dissipated a doubt. Like all true
artists who wrap themselves up in the character they represent, the
detective really felt something of the sensations which he
interpreted, and his expressive face was terrible in its contortions.

"That," he resumed, "is the first act of the drama. An irresistible
prostration succeeds the count's furious passion. The various
circumstances which I am describing to you are to be noticed in
nearly all great crimes. The assassin is always seized, after the
murder, with a horrible and singular hatred against his victim, and
he often mutilates the body. Then comes the period of a prostration
so great, of torpor so irresistible, that murderers have been known
literally to go to sleep in the blood, that they have been surprised
sleeping, and that it was with great difficulty that they were
awakened. The count, when he has frightfully disfigured the poor
lady, falls into an arm-chair; indeed, the cloth of one of the
chairs has retained some wrinkles, which shows that someone had