y little to get myself
assassinated, when I had before me an accused person whom I felt was
guilty and who would not confess. Take away the man!"

While they were pushing Prades toward the corridor he shouted:
"_Canailles_." M. Ginory ordered that Dantin should be left alone with
him. "Alone," he said to Bernardet, whose look was a little uneasy. The
registrar half rose from his chair, picking up his papers and pushing
them into the pockets of his much worn paper case.

"No; you may remain, Favarel."

"Well," said the Magistrate in a familiar tone, when he found himself
face to face with Jacques Dantin. "Have you reflected?"

Jacques Dantin, his lips pressed closely together, did not reply.

"It is a counsellor--a counsellor of an especial kind--the cell. He who
invented it"----

"Yes;" Dantin brusquely interrupted. "The brain suffers between those
walls. I have not slept since I went there. Not slept at all. Insomnia
is killing me. It seems as if I should go crazy!"

"Then?" asked M. Ginory.

"Then"----

Jacques Dantin looked fiercely at the registrar, who sat waiting, his
pen over his ear, his elbows on the table, his chin on his hands.

"Then, oh, well! Then, here it is, I wish to tell you all--all. But to
you--to you"----

"To me alone?"

"Yes," said Dantin, with the same fierce expression.

"My dear Favarel," the Magistrate began.

The registrar had already risen. He slowly bowed and went out.

"Now," said the Magistrate to Jacques Dantin, "you can speak."

The man still hesitated.

"Monsieur," he asked, "will any word said here be repeated, ought it or
must it be repeated in a courtroom, at the Assizes, I know not
where--anywhere before the public?"

"That depends," said M. Ginory. "But what you know you owe to justice,
whether it be a revelation, an accusation or a confession, I ask it of
you."

Still Dantin hesitated. Then the Magistrate spoke these words: "I demand
it!"

With a violent effort the prisoner began. "So be it! But it is to a man
of honor, rather than to a Magistrate, to whom I address these words. If
I have hesitated to speak, if I have allowed myself to be suspected and
to be accused, it is because it seemed to me impossible, absolutely
impossible, that this same truth should not be revealed--I do not know
in what way--that it would become known to you without compelling me to
disclose a secret which was not mine."

"To an Examining Magistrate one may tell everything,"