at I am very proud of my
achievement. Cardillac, I must tell you, was a most abandoned old
hypocritical ruffian, who went about at night robbing and murdering
people, and was never suspected of anything of the kind. I don't,
myself, know from whence it came, that I felt a suspicion of the old
scoundrel when he seemed so distressed at handing me over some work
which I had got him to do for me, when he carefully wormed out of me
for whom I designed it, and cross-questioned my valet as to the times
when I was in the habit of going to see a certain lady. It struck me
long ago, that all the people who were murdered by the unknown hands,
had the self-same wound, and I saw quite clearly, that the murderer had
practised to the utmost perfection of certainty that particular thrust,
which must kill instantaneously--and that he reckoned upon it; so that,
if it were to fail, the fight would be fair. This led me to employ a
precaution so very simple and obvious, that I cannot imagine how
somebody else did not think of it long ago. I wore a light breastplate
of steel under my dress. Cardillac set upon me from behind. He grasped
me with the strength of a giant, but his finely directed thrust glided
off the steel breast-plate. I then freed myself from his clutch, and
planted my dagger into his heart."

"And you have said nothing?" said Mademoiselle Scuderi. "You have not
told the authorities anything about this?"

"Allow me to point out to you, Mademoiselle," said he, "that to have
done that would have involved me in a most terrible legal
investigation, probably ending in my ruin. La Regnie, who scents out
crime everywhere, would not have been at all likely to believe me at
once, when I accused the good, respectable, exemplary Cardillac of
being an habitual murderer. The sword of Justice would, most probably,
have turned its point against me."

"Impossible," said Mademoiselle Scuderi. "Your rank--your position----"

"Oh!" interrupted Miossens, "remember the Marechal de Luxemburg; he
took it into his head to have his horoscope cast by Le Sage, and was
suspected of poisoning, and put in the Bastille. No; by Saint Dyonys!
not one moment of freedom--not the tip of one of my ears, would I trust
to that raging La Regnie, who would be delighted to put his knife to
all our throats."

"But this brings an innocent man to the scaffold," said Mademoiselle
Scuderi.

"Innocent, Mademoiselle!" cried Miossens. "Do you call Cardillac's
accompli