at, sir," answered Dacosta, "I invented a pretext, but in
reality I had a motive."

"What was the pretext?"

"The responsibility of taking into Para a large raft, and a cargo of
different products of the Amazon."

"Ah! and what was the real motive of your departure?"

And in asking this question Jarriquez said to himself:

"Now we shall get into denials and falsehoods."

"The real motive," replied Joam Dacosta, in a firm voice, "was the
resolution I had taken to give myself up to the justice of my country."

"You give yourself up!" exclaimed the judge, rising from his stool. "You
give yourself up of your own free will?"

"Of my own free will."

"And why?"

"Because I had had enough of this lying life, this obligation to live
under a false name, of this impossibility to be able to restore to
my wife and children that which belongs to them; in short, sir,
because----"

"Because?"

"I was innocent!"

"That is what I was waiting for," said Judge Jarriquez.

And while his fingers tattooed a slightly more audible march, he made a
sign with his head to Dacosta, which signified as clearly as possible,
"Go on! Tell me your history. I know it, but I do not wish to interrupt
you in telling it in your own way."

Joam Dacosta, who did not disregard the magistrate's far from
encouraging attitude, could not but see this, and he told the history of
his whole life. He spoke quietly without departing from the calm he
had imposed upon himself, without omitting any circumstances which had
preceded or succeeded his condemnation. In the same tone he insisted
on the honored and honorable life he had led since his escape, on his
duties as head of his family, as husband and father, which he had so
worthily fulfilled. He laid stress only on one circumstance--that which
had brought him to Manaos to urge on the revision of the proceedings
against him, to procure his rehabilitation--and that he was compelled to
do.

Judge Jarriquez, who was naturally prepossessed against all criminals,
did not interrupt him. He contented himself with opening and shutting
his eyes like a man who heard the story told for the hundredth time; and
when Joam Dacosta laid on the table the memoir which he had drawn up, he
made no movement to take it.

"You have finished?" he said.

"Yes, sir."

"And you persist in asserting that you only left Iquitos to procure the
revision of the judgment against you."

"I had no other intention."

"What is t