ment? One opens the poor eyes, and that is
sinister, certainly, but when one holds an autopsy at the Morgue, when
one enlarges the gash in the throat in order to study it, when one
dissects the body, is it any more respectful or proper? Ah! Monsieur, if
I but had your power"----

M. Ginory seemed quite struck with all that the police officer had said
to him, but while he still held to his convictions, he did not seem
quite averse to trying the experiment. Who can say to science "Halt!"
and impose upon it limits which cannot be passed? No one!

"We will see, Bernardet."

And in that "we will see" there was already a half promise.

"Ah! if you only will, and what would it cost you?" added Bernardet,
still urgent; indeed, almost suppliant.

"Let us finish this now. They are waiting for me," said the Examining
Magistrate.

As he left M. Rovere's study, he instinctively cast a glance at the rare
volumes, with their costly bindings, and he reentered the salon where M.
Jacquelin des Audrays had, without doubt, finished his examination.

CHAPTER VI.

THE attorney for the Republic called in the Examining Magistrate.
Nothing more was to be done. The Magistrate had studied the position of
the corpse, examined the wound, and now, having told M. Ginory his
impressions, he did not hide from him his belief that the crime had been
committed by a professional, as the stroke of the knife across the
throat had been given neatly, scientifically, according to all the
established rules.

"One might well take it for the work of a professional butcher."

"Yes, without doubt, M. Ginory; but one does not know. Brute force--a
strong blow--can produce exactly what science can."

More agitated than he wished to appear by the strange conversation
between the Agent of Surete and himself, the Examining Magistrate stood
at the foot of the corpse and gazed, with a fixity almost fierce, not at
the gaping wound of which M. Jacquelin des Audrays had spoken to him,
but at those eyes,--those fixed eyes, those eyes which no opacity had
yet invaded, which, open, frightful, seemingly burning with anger,
menacing, full of accusations of some sort and animated with vengeance,
gave him a look, immovable, most powerful.

It was true! it was true! They lived! those eyes spoke. They cried to
him for justice. They retained the expression of some atrocious vision:
the expression of violent rage. They menaced some one-