d? 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 to the pistol, which gleamed in the
sunlight that entered through the casement. Then he added: "And you will
have the idea still less when you will have been able to prove 'de visu'
what those anonymous letters were worth. Twelve letters in fifteen
days, and cuttings from how many papers? And they claim that we invent
heinousness in our books! If you like, we will search together for the
person who can have elaborated that little piece of villany. It must be
a Judas, a Rodin, an Iago--or Iaga. But this is not the moment to waste
in hypotheses.

"Are you sure of your valet? You must send him a despatch, and in that
despatch the copy of another addressed to Madame Gorka, which your
man will send this very evening. You will announce your arrival for
tomorrow, making allusion to a letter written, so to speak, from Poland,
and which was lost. This evening from here you will take the train for
Florence, from which place you will set out again this very night. You
will be in Rome again to-morrow morning. You will have avoided, not only
the misfortu