e your information
and not make an enigma of your deposition. I do not understand this
useless reticence, and moral debts, to use your words; they are only to
gain time. What, then, was M. Rovere's past?"

Dantin hesitated a moment; not very long. Then he firmly said: "That,
Monsieur le Juge, is a secret confided to me by my friend, and as it has
nothing to do with this matter, I ask you to refrain from questioning me
about it."

"I beg your pardon," the magistrate replied. "There is not, there cannot
be a secret for an Examining Magistrate. In Rovere's interests, whose
memory ought to have public vindication, yes, in his interests, and I
ought to say also in your own, it is necessary that you should state
explicitly what you have just alluded to. You tell me that there is a
secret. I wish to know it."

"It is the confidence of a dead person, Monsieur," Dantin replied, in
vibrating tones.

"There are no confidences when justice is in the balance."

"But it is also the secret of a living person," said Jacques Dantin.

"Is it of yourself of whom you speak?"

He gazed keenly at the face, now tortured and contracted.

Dantin replied: "No, I do not speak of myself, but of another."

"That other--who is he?"

"It is impossible to tell you."

"Impossible?"

"Absolutely impossible!"

"I will repeat to you my first question--'Why?'"

"Because I have sworn on my honor to reveal it to no one."

"Ah, ah!" said Ginory, mockingly; "it was a vow? That is perfect!"

"Yes, Monsieur le Juge; it was a vow."

"A vow made to whom?"

"To Rovere."

"Who is no longer here to release you from it. I understand."

"And," asked Dantin, with a vehemence which made the registrar's thin
hand tremble as it flew over the paper, "what do you understand?"

"Pardon," said M. Ginory; "you are not here to put questions, but to
answer those which are asked you. It is certain that a vow which binds
the holder of a secret is a means of defence, but the accused have, by
making common use of it, rendered it useless."

The Magistrate noticed the almost menacing frown with which Dantin
looked at him at the words, "the accused."

"The accused?" said the man, turning in his chair. "Am I one of the
accused?" His voice was strident, almost strangled.

"I do not know that," said M. Ginory, in a very calm tone; "I say that
you wish to keep your secret, and it is a claim which I do not admit."

"I repeat, Monsieur le Juge, that the secret