“I know that both of you are excellent men, and both most generous; you must have some love for me too, since, though you believe me blackened with a hideous crime, you can still think of saving my life.  But have no fears on my account, good friends; I am innocent of this crime, and my one wish is that the matter may be fully investigated, so that I may be acquitted—­yes, this is inevitable, I owe it to my family to live until my honour has been freed from stain.  Then, if I am condemned to see my cousin die, as I have no one in the world to love but her, I will blow my brains out.  Why, then, should I be downcast?  I set little store by my life.  May God make the last hours of her whom I shall certainly not survive painless and peaceful—­that is all I ask of Him.”

Patience shook his head with a gloomy, dissatisfied expression.  He was so convinced of my crime that all my denials only served to alienate his pity.  Marcasse still loved me, though he thought I was guilty.  I had no one in the world to answer for my innocence, except myself.

“If you persist on returning to the chateau,” exclaimed Patience, “you must swear before you leave that you will not enter your cousin’s room, or your uncle’s, without the abbe’s permission.”

“What I swear is that I am innocent,” I replied, “and that I will allow no man to saddle me with a crime.  Back, both of you!  Let me pass!  Patience, if you consider it your duty to denounce me, go and do so.  All that I ask is that I may not be condemned without a hearing; I prefer the bar of justice to that of mere opinion.”

I rushed out of the cottage and returned to the chateau.  However, not wishing to make a scandal before the servants, and knowing quite well that they could not hide Edmee’s real condition from me, I went and shut myself up in the room I usually occupied.

But in the evening, just as I was leaving it to get news of the two patients, Mademoiselle Leblanc again told me that some one wished to speak with me outside.  I noticed that her face betrayed a sense of joy as well as fear.  I concluded that they had come to arrest me, and I suspected (rightly, as it transpired) that Mademoiselle Leblanc had denounced me.  I went to the window, and saw some of the mounted police in the courtyard.

“Good,” I said; “let my destiny take its course.”

But, before quitting, perhaps forever, this house in which I was leaving my soul, I wished to see Edmee again for the last time.  I walked straight to her room.  Mademoiselle Leblanc tried to throw herself in front of the door; I pushed her aside so roughly that she fell, and, I believe, hurt herself slightly.  She immediately filled the house with her cries; and later, in the trial, made a great pother about what she was pleased to call an attempt to murder her.  I at once entered Edmee’s room; there I found the abbe and the doctor.  I listened in silence to what the latter was saying.  I learnt