assassinated the 14th of June, 1868.'"

"Yes," again said M. Ginory. "It was a communication from Dr. Bourion,
of Darnez."

"Precisely."

"And the proof sent by the Doctor showed the instant when, after
striking the mother, the assassin killed the child, while the dog sprang
toward the little carriage in which the little one lay."

"Yes, Monsieur Ginory."

"Oh, well, but my poor Bernardet, Dr. Vernois, since you have read his
report"----

"By chance, Monsieur, I found it on a book stall and it has kept running
in my head ever since, over and over and over again."

"Dr. Vernois, my poor fellow, made many experiments. At first the proof
sent was so confused, so hazy, that no one who had not seen what
Bourion had written could have told what it was. If Vernois, who was a
very scientific man, could find nothing--nothing, I repeat--which
justified Dr. Bourion's declarations, what do you expect that any one
else could make of those researches? Do not talk any more or even think
any more about it."

"I beg your pardon, Monsieur Ginory; one can and ought to think about
it. In any case, I am thinking about it."

A smile of doubt crossed M. Ginory's lips. Bernardet quickly added:
"Photography of the invisible has been proven. Are not the Roentgen
Rays, the famous X Rays, as incredible as that photography can find the
image of a murderer on the retina of a dead person's eye? They invent
some foolish things, those Americans, but they often presage the truth.
Do they not catch, by photography, the last sighs of the dying? Do they
not fix upon the film or on plates that mysterious thing which haunts
us, the occult? They throw bridges across unknown abysses as over great
bodies of water or from one precipice to another, and they reach the
other side. I beg your pardon, Monsieur," and the police officer stopped
short in his enthusiastic defence as he caught sight of M. Ginory's
astonished face; "I seem to have been making a speech, a thing I
detest."

"Why do you say that to me? Because I looked astonished at what you have
told me? I am not only surprised, I am charmed. Go on! Go on!"

"Oh! well, what seemed folly yesterday will be an established fact
to-morrow. A fact is a fact. Dr. Vernois had better have tested again
and again his contradictory experiments. Dr. Bourion's experiments had
preceded his own. If Dr. Vernois saw nothing in the picture taken of the
retina of the eye of the woman assassinated June 14, 1868, I