indisposition; and his features assumed an expression which
indicated either careless indifference, or complete resignation.

"Do you feel better?" asked M. Segmuller.

"I feel very well."

"I hope," continued the magistrate, paternally, "that in future you will
know how to moderate your excitement. Yesterday you tried to destroy
yourself. It would have been another great crime added to many others--a
crime which--"

With a hasty movement of the hand, the prisoner interrupted him. "I
have committed no crime," said he, in a rough, but no longer threatening
voice. "I was attacked, and I defended myself. Any one has a right to do
that. There were three men against me. It was a great misfortune; and
I would give my right hand to repair it; but my conscience does not
reproach me--that much!"

The prisoner's "that much," was a contemptuous snap of his finger and
thumb.

"And yet I've been arrested and treated like an assassin," he continued.
"When I saw myself interred in that living tomb which you call a secret
cell, I grew afraid; I lost my senses. I said to myself: 'My boy,
they've buried you alive; and it is better to die--to die quickly,
if you don't wish to suffer.' So I tried to strangle myself. My death
wouldn't have caused the slightest sorrow to any one. I have neither
wife nor child depending upon me for support. However, my attempt was
frustrated. I was bled; and then placed in a strait-waistcoat, as if I
were a madman. Mad! I really believed I should become so. All night
long the jailors sat around me, like children amusing themselves by
tormenting a chained animal. They watched me, talked about me, and
passed the candle to and fro before my eyes."

The prisoner talked forcibly, but without any attempt at oratorical
display; there was bitterness but not anger in his tone; in short, he
spoke with all the seeming sincerity of a man giving expression to some
deep emotion or conviction. As the magistrate and the detective heard
him speak, they were seized with the same idea. "This man," they
thought, "is very clever; it won't be easy to get the better of him."

Then, after a moment's reflection, M. Segmuller added aloud: "This
explains your first act of despair; but later on, for instance, even
this morning, you refused to eat the food that was offered you."

As the prisoner heard this remark, his lowering face suddenly
brightened, he gave a comical wink, and finally burst into a hearty
laugh, gay, frank,