“To repair the mischief I have done, I am forwarding to the public
  prosecutor a retraction of my deposition.  You will know how to
  take advantage of this document.

“In virtue of a will formally drawn up, restitution will be made, Monsieur l’Abbe, of the moneys belonging to your Order which you so imprudently devoted to my use, as a result of your paternal affection for me.

“And so, farewell.  Farewell, colossal image of Evil and Corruption; farewell—­to you who, if started on the right road, might have been greater than Ximenes, greater than Richelieu!  You have kept your promises.  I find myself once more just as I was on the banks of the Charente, after enjoying, by your help, the enchantments of a dream.  But, unfortunately, it is not now in the waters of my native place that I shall drown the errors of a boy; but in the Seine, and my hole is a cell in the Conciergerie.

“Do not regret me:  my contempt for you is as great as my
admiration.

“LUCIEN.”

“Recantation.

“I, the undersigned, hereby declare that I retract, without
reservation, all that I deposed at my examination to-day before
Monsieur Camusot.

“The Abbe Carlos Herrera always called himself my spiritual
father, and I was misled by the word father used in another sense
by the judge, no doubt under a misapprehension.

“I am aware that, for political ends, and to quash certain secrets concerning the Cabinets of Spain and of the Tuileries, some obscure diplomatic agents tried to show that the Abbe Carlos Herrera was a forger named Jacques Collin; but the Abbe Carlos Herrera never told me anything about the matter excepting that he was doing his best to obtain evidence of the death or of the continued existence of Jacques Collin.

“LUCIEN DE RUBEMPRE.

“AT THE CONCIERGERIE, May 15th, 1830.”

The fever for suicide had given Lucien immense clearness of mind, and the swiftness of hand familiar to authors in the fever of composition.  The impetus was so strong within him that these four documents were all written within half an hour; he folded them in a wrapper, fastened with wafers, on which he impressed with the strength of delirium the coat-of-arms engraved on a seal-ring he wore, and he then laid the packet very conspicuously in the middle of the floor.

Certainly it would have been impossible to conduct himself with greater dignity, in the false position to which all this infamy had led him; he was rescuing his memory from opprobrium, and repairing the injury done to his accomplice, so far as the wit of a man of the world could nullify the result of the poet’s trustfulness.