ury; but I must warn you that you
will expose yourself to a terrible deception if you believe that her
testimony alone will give your brother liberty. It is not on a testimony
of this kind or of this quality that the law decides; better than we,
it knows to what illusions people can lend themselves when it is the
question of a crime that absorbs and excites the public curiosity. There
are some witnesses who, with the best faith in the world, believe they
have seen the most extraordinary things which only existed in their
imaginations; and there are people who accuse themselves rather than say
nothing."

He heaped words on words, as if, in trying to convince Phillis, he might
hope to convince himself; but when the sound of his words faded, he was
obliged to declare to himself that, whatever the paralysis of this woman
might be, it had not, in this instance, produced either defect of sight
or of mind. She had seen, indeed, the tall man with long hair and curled
beard, dressed like a gentleman, who was not Florentin. When she related
the story of the lamp and the curtain cords, she knew what she was
saying.

In his first alarm he had been very near betraying himself. Without
doubt he should have told himself that this incident of the curtains
might prove a trap; but all passed so rapidly that he never imagined
that, exactly at the moment when Caffie raised the lamp to give him
light, there was a woman opposite looking at him, and who saw him
so plainly that she had not forgotten him. He thought to use all
precautions on his side in drawing the curtains, when, on the contrary,
he would have done better had he left them undrawn. Without doubt the
widow of the attorney would have been a witness of a part of the scene,
but in the shadow she would not have distinguished his features as she
was able to do when he placed himself before the window under the light.
But this idea did not enter his mind, and, to save himself from
an immediate danger, he threw himself into another which, although
uncertain, was not less grave.

Little by little Phillis recovered herself, and the hope that Madame
Dammauville put in her heart, momentarily crushed by Saniel's remarks,
sprang up again.

"Is it not possible Madame Dammauville really saw what she relates?"

"Without any doubt; and there are even probabilities that it is so,
since the man who drew the curtains was not your brother, as we know.
Unfortunately, it is not ourselves who mus