as if he were
completely absorbed. He was very quiet, eating very little, and seemed
thoughtful. His wife asked him, "Art thou ill?" He responded, "No, I
think not." And his little girls said to each other in low tones, "Papa
is on a trail!"

He was, in truth! The hunting dog smelled the scent! The pictures which
he had taken of the retina and had developed showed a result
sufficiently clear for Bernardet to feel confident enough to tell his
chief that he distinctly saw a visage, the face of a man, confused, no
doubt, but clear enough to recognize not only a type, but a distinct
type. As from the depths of a cloud, in a sort of white halo, a human
face appeared whose features could be distinctly seen with a magnifying
glass! The face of a man with a pointed black beard, the forehead a
little bald, and blackish spots which indicated the eyes. It was only a
phantom, evidently, and the photographer at the Prefecture seemed more
moved than Bernardet by the proofs obtained. Clearer than in spirit
photographs, which so many credulous people believe in, the image showed
plainly, and in studying it one could distinctly follow the contours. A
spectre, perhaps, but the spectre of a man who was still young and
resembled, with his pointed beard, some trooper of the sixteenth
century, a phantom of some Seigneur Clouet.

"For example," said the official photographer, "if one could discover a
murderer by photographing a dead man's eyes, this would be miraculous.
It is incredible!"

"Not more incredible," Bernardet replied, "than what the papers publish:
Edison is experimenting on making the blind see by using the Roentgen
Rays. There is a miracle!"

Then Bernardet took his proofs to M. Ginory. The police officer felt
that the magistrate, the sovereign power in criminal researches, ought,
above everything, to collaborate with him, to consent to these
experiments which so many others had declared useless and absurd. The
taste for researches, which was with M. Ginory a matter of temperament
as well as a duty to his profession, was, fortunately, keen on this
scent. Criminals call in their argot, the judges, "the pryers."
Curiosity in this man was combined with a knowledge of profound
researches.

When Bernardet spread out on M. Ginory's desk the four photographs which
he had brought with him, the first remark which the examining Magistrate
made was: "But I see nothing--a cloud, a mist, and then after?"
Bernardet drew a magnifying