ve twelve of them--do you hear? twelve--in my
portfolio, and all composed with the same atrocious knowledge of the
circle in which we move, as was the first. At the same time I was
receiving letters from my poor wife, and all coincided, in the terrible
series, in a frightful concordance. The anonymous letter told me: 'To-day
they were together two hours and a quarter,' while Maud wrote: 'I could
not go out to-day, as agreed upon, with Madame Steno, for she had a
headache.' Then the portrait of Alba, of which they told me incidentally.
The anonymous letters detailed to me the events, the prolongation of
sitting, while my wife wrote: 'We again went to see Alba's portrait
yesterday. The painter erased what he had done.' Finally it became
impossible for me to endure it. With their abominable minuteness of
detail, the anonymous letters gave me even the address of their
rendezvous! I set out. I said to myself, 'If I announce my arrival to my
wife they will find it out, they will escape me.' I intended to surprise
them. I wanted--Do I know what I wanted? I wanted to suffer no longer the
agony of uncertainty. I took the train. I stopped neither day nor night.
I left my valet yesterday in Florence, and this morning I was in Rome.

"My plan was made on the way. I would hire apartments near theirs, in the
same street, perhaps in the same house. I would watch them, one, two
days, a week. And then--would you believe it? It was in the cab which was
bearing me directly toward that street that I saw suddenly, clearly
within me, and that I was startled. I had my hand upon this revolver." He
drew the weapon from his pocket and laid it upon the divan, as if he
wished to repulse any new temptation. "I saw myself as plainly as I see
you, killing those two beings like two animals, should I surprise them.
At the same time I saw my son and my wife. Between murder and me there
was, perhaps, just the distance which separated me from the street, and I
felt that it was necessary to fly at once--to fly that street, to fly
from the guilty ones, if they were really guilty; to fly from myself! I
thought of you, and I have come to say to you, 'My friend, this is how
things are; I am drowning, I am lost; save me.'"

"You have yourself found the salvation," replied Dorsenne. "It is in your
son and your wife. See them first, and if I can not promise you that you
will not suffer any more, you will no longer be tempted by that horrible
idea." And he pointed