the mystery."

He tried to control his emotion, but it was too great; and his nerves
were so immensely staggered by the trial that he began to shed tears. He
had caught sight of the appalling truth, all of a sudden, as when at
night one half sees a landscape under a lightning-flash.

There is nothing more unnerving than this sudden illumination when we
have been groping and struggling in the dark. Already exhausted by his
physical efforts and by the want of food, from which he was beginning to
suffer, he felt the shock so intensely that, without caring to think a
moment longer, he managed to go to sleep, or, rather, to sink into sleep,
as one sinks into the healing waters of a bath.

When he woke, in the small hours, alert and well despite the
discomfort of his couch, he shuddered on thinking of the theory which
he had accepted; and his first instinct was to doubt it. He had, so to
speak, no time.

All the proofs came rushing to his mind of their own accord and at once
transformed the theory into one of those certainties which it would be
madness to deny. It was that and nothing else. As he had foreseen, the
truth lay recorded in Sauverand's story. And he had not been mistaken,
either, in saying to Mazeroux that the manner in which the mysterious
letters appeared had put him on the track of the truth.

And the truth was terrible. He felt, at the thought of it, the same fears
that had maddened Inspector Verot when, already tortured by the poison,
he stammered:

"Oh, I don't like this, I don't like the look of this!... The whole thing
has been planned in such an infernal manner!"

Infernal was the word! And Don Luis remained stupefied at the revelation
of a crime which looked as if no human brain could have conceived it.

For two hours more he devoted all his mental powers to examining the
situation from every point of view. He was not much disturbed about the
result, because, being now in possession of the terrible secret, he had
nothing more to do but make his escape and go that evening to the meeting
on the Boulevard Suchet, where he would show them all how the murder was
committed.

But when, wishing to try his chance of escaping, he went up through the
underground passage and climbed to the top of the upper ladder--that is
to say, to the level of the boudoir--he heard through the trapdoor the
voices of men in the room.

"By Jove!" he said to himself, "the thing is not so simple as I thought!
In order to e