h it is a most singular one. The blind man concerning whom you
inquire was found in a low haunt in the Champs Elysees, in which a gang
of robbers and murderers of the worst description were apprehended; this
wretched object was discovered, chained in the midst of an underground
cave, and beside him lay stretched the dead body of a woman, so
horribly mutilated that it was wholly impossible to attempt to identify
it. The man himself was hideously ugly, his features being quite
destroyed by the application of vitriol. He has never uttered a single
word since he came hither; whether his dumbness be real or affected I
know not, for, strange to say, his paroxysms always occur during the
night, and when I am absent, so as to baffle all conjecture as to his
real situation; but his madness seems occasioned by violent rage, the
cause of which we cannot find out, for, as I before observed, he never
speaks or utters an articulate sound. But here he is."

The whole of the party accompanying the doctor started with horror at
the sight of the Schoolmaster, for he it was, who merely feigned being
dumb and mad to procure his own safety. The dead body found beside him
was that of the Chouette, whom he had murdered, not during a paroxysm of
madness, but while under the influence of such a burning fever of the
brain as had produced the fearful dream he had dreamed the night he
passed at the farm of Bouqueval.

After his apprehension in the vaults of the tavern in the Champs
Elysees, the Schoolmaster had awakened from his delirium to find himself
a prisoner in one of the cells of the Conciergerie, where mad persons
are temporarily placed under restraint. Hearing all about him speak of
him as a raving and dangerous lunatic, he resolved to continue to enact
the part, and even feigned absolute dumbness for the purpose of avoiding
the chance of any questions being attempted to be put to him.

His scheme succeeded. When removed to Bicetre he affected occasional
fits of furious madness, taking care always to select the night for
these outrageous bursts, the better to escape the vigilant eye of the
head surgeon; the house doctor, hastily summoned, never arriving in time
to witness either the beginning or ending of these attacks.

The few of his accomplices who knew either his name, or the fact of his
having escaped from the galleys at Rochefort, were ignorant of what had
become of him; and even if they did, what interest could they have in
deno