victim of the most terrible despair. That,
of itself, closed my lips, though the consequence of my silence should
be a criminal's death for myself. Although much was to be gathered from
what the Marechaussee had said, still Cardillac's crimes, their motive,
and the manner in which he carried them out, were a riddle to me. The
solution of it soon came. One day Cardillac--who usually excited my
horror by laughing and jesting during our work, in the highest of
spirits--was very grave and thoughtful. Suddenly he threw the piece of
work he was engaged on aside, so that the pearls and other stones
rolled about the floor, started to his feet, and said: 'Olivier! things
cannot go on between us like this; the situation is unendurable. What
the ablest and most ingenious efforts of Desgrais and his myrmidons
failed to find out, chance has played into your hands. You saw me at my
nocturnal work, to which my Evil Star compels me, so that no resistance
is possible for me; and it was your own Evil Star, moreover, which led
you to follow me; wrapped and hid you in an impenetrable mantle; gave
that lightness to your foot-fall which enabled you to move along with
the noiselessness of the smaller animals, so that I--who see clear by
night, as doth the tiger, and hear the smallest sound, the humming of
the gnat, streets away--did not observe you. Your Evil Star brought you
to me, my comrade--my accomplice! You see, now, that you can't betray
me; therefore you shall know all.'

"I would have cried out, 'Never, never shall I be your comrade, your
accomplice, you atrocious miscreant.' But the inward horror which I
felt at his words paralysed my tongue. Instead of words I could only
utter an unintelligible noise. Cardillac sat down in his working chair
again, wiped the perspiration from his brow, and seemed to find it
difficult to pull himself together, hard beset by the recollection of
the past. At length he began: 'Wise men have much to say of the strange
impulses which come to women when they are _enceinte_, and the strange
influence which those vivid, involuntary impulses exercise upon the
child. A wonderful tale is told of _my_ mother. When she was a month
gone with me she was looking on, with other women, at a court pageant
at the Trianon, and saw a certain cavalier in Spanish dress, with a
glittering chain of jewels about his neck, from which she could not
remove her eyes. Her whole being was longing for those sparkling
stones, which se