ep,' said they, 'and you are a dead man.'--'Why
should you threaten me with death,' cried I, 'when I have already
declared my innocence?'--'Tush, tush,' cried the men; 'keep your
innocent stories to tell to the judge at Nimes. Meanwhile, come along
with us; and the best advice we can give you is to do so unresistingly.'
Alas, resistance was far from my thoughts. I was utterly overpowered
by surprise and terror; and without a word I suffered myself to be
handcuffed and tied to a horse's tail, and thus they took me to Nimes.

"I had been tracked by a customs-officer, who had lost sight of me near
the tavern; feeling certain that I intended to pass the night there, he
had returned to summon his comrades, who just arrived in time to
hear the report of the pistol, and to take me in the midst of such
circumstantial proofs of my guilt as rendered all hopes of proving
my innocence utterly futile. One only chance was left me, that of
beseeching the magistrate before whom I was taken to cause every inquiry
to be made for the Abbe Busoni, who had stopped at the inn of the Pont
du Gard on that morning. If Caderousse had invented the story relative
to the diamond, and there existed no such person as the Abbe Busoni,
then, indeed, I was lost past redemption, or, at least, my life hung
upon the feeble chance of Caderousse himself being apprehended
and confessing the whole truth. Two months passed away in hopeless
expectation on my part, while I must do the magistrate the justice
to say that he used every means to obtain information of the person I
declared could exculpate me if he would. Caderousse still evaded all
pursuit, and I had resigned myself to what seemed my inevitable fate.
My trial was to come on at the approaching assizes; when, on the 8th of
September--that is to say, precisely three months and five days after
the events which had perilled my life--the Abbe Busoni, whom I never
ventured to believe I should see, presented himself at the prison doors,
saying he understood one of the prisoners wished to speak to him;
he added, that having learned at Marseilles the particulars of my
imprisonment, he hastened to comply with my desire. You may easily
imagine with what eagerness I welcomed him, and how minutely I
related the whole of what I had seen and heard. I felt some degree of
nervousness as I entered upon the history of the diamond, but, to my
inexpressible astonishment, he confirmed it in every particular, and to
my equal