continued:

"It was against Arsene Lupin, therefore, that Florence, Marie's terrified
friend, engaged in the struggle. It was to unmask Lupin that she wrote or
rather inspired the article of which you found the original in a ball of
string. It was Lupin whom she spied upon, day by day, in this house. It
was Lupin whom she heard one morning telephoning to Sergeant Mazeroux and
rejoicing in my imminent arrest. It was to save me from Lupin that she
let down the iron curtain in front of him, at the risk of an accident,
and took a taxi to the corner of the Boulevard Richard-Wallace, where she
arrived too late to warn me, as the detectives had already entered my
house, but in time to screen me from their pursuit.

"Her mistrust and terror-stricken hatred of you were told to me in an
instant," Sauverand declared. "During the twenty minutes which we
employed in throwing our assailants off the scent, she hurriedly sketched
the main lines of the business and described to me in a few words the
leading part which you were playing in it; and we then and there prepared
a counter-attack upon you, so that you might be suspected of complicity.

"While I was sending a message to the Prefect of Police, Florence went
home and hid under the cushions of your sofa the end of the stick
which I had kept in my hand without thinking. It was an ineffective
parry and missed its aim. But the fight had begun; and I threw myself
into it headlong.

"Monsieur, to understand my actions thoroughly, you must remember that I
was a student, a man leading a solitary life, but also an ardent lover. I
would have spent all my life in work, asking no more from fate than to
see Marie at her window from time to time at night. But, once she was
being persecuted, another man arose within me, a man of action, bungling,
certainly, and inexperienced, but a man who was ready to stick at
nothing, and who, not knowing how to save Marie Fauville, had no other
object before him than to do away with that enemy of Marie's to whom he
was entitled to ascribe all the misfortunes that had befallen the woman
he loved.... This started the series of my attempts upon your life.
Brought into your house, concealed in Florence's own rooms, I
tried--unknown to her: that I swear--to poison you."

He paused for an instant to mark the effect of his words, then went on:

"Her reproaches, her abhorrence of such an act, would perhaps have moved
me, but, I repeat, I was mad, quite mad; and