which had been sent, a long time
before, to the Society, and Bernardet set himself to study out the old
crime with the most careful attention; with the passion of a
paleographer deciphering a palimpsest. This poor devil of a police
officer, in his ardent desire to solve the vexing problem, brought to it
the same ardor and the same faith as a bibliophile. He went over and
over with the method of an Examining Magistrate all that old forgotten
affair, and in the solitude and silence of his little room the last
reflections of the setting sun falling on his papers and making pale the
light of his lamp, he set himself the task of solving, like a
mathematical problem, that question which he had studied, but which he
wished to know from the very beginning, without any doubts, before
seeing M. Ginory again at the Morgue, beside the body of M. Rovere. He
took his pamphlet and read: "The photograph sent to the Society of
Medical Jurisprudence by Dr. Bourion taken upon the retina of the eye of
a woman who had been murdered the 14th of June, 1868, represents the
moment when the assassin, after having struck the mother, kills the
infant, and the dog belonging to the house leaps toward the unfortunate
little victim to save it."

Then studying, turn by turn, the photograph yellowed by time, and the
article which described it, Bernardet satisfied himself, and learned the
history by heart.

M. Gallard, General Secretary of the Society, after having carefully
hidden the back part of the photograph, had circulated it about among
the members with this note: "Enigma of Medical Jurisprudence." And no
one had solved the tragic enigma. Even when he had explained, no one
could see in the photograph what Dr. Bourion saw there. Some were able
on examining that strange picture to see in the black and white haze
some figures as singular and dissimilar as those which the amiable
Polonius perceived in the clouds under the suggestion of Hamlet.

Dr. Vernois, appointed to write a report on Dr. Bourion's communication,
asked him then how the operation had been conducted, and Dr. Bourion had
given him these details, which Bernardet was now reading and studying:
The assassination had taken place on Sunday between noon and 4 o'clock;
the extraction of the eyes from their orbits had not been made until the
following day at 6 o'clock in the evening.

The experiment on the eyes, those terribly accusing eyes of this dead
man, could be made twenty-four hours