clear blue eyes, eyes which it was impossible to forget.

The man himself remained perfectly impassive, so that Monsieur de
Vargnes was forced to say to himself:

"Probably I am the sport of an hallucination at this moment, or else
there are two pairs of eyes that are perfectly similar in the world.
And what eyes! Can it be possible?"

The magistrate instituted inquiries into his life, and he discovered
this, which removed all his doubts.

Five years previously, Monsieur X---- had been a very poor, but very
brilliant medical student, who, although he never took his doctor's
degree, had already made himself remarkable by his microbiological
researches.

A young and very rich widow had fallen in love with him and married
him. She had one child by her first marriage, and in the space of six
months, first the child and then the mother died of typhoid fever, and
thus Monsieur X---- had inherited a large fortune, in due form, and
without any possible dispute. Everybody said that he had attended to
the two patients with the utmost devotion. Now, were these two deaths
the two crimes mentioned in his letter?

But then, Monsieur X---- must have poisoned his two victims with the
microbes of typhoid fever, which he had skillfully cultivated in them,
so as to make the disease incurable, even by the most devoted care and
attention. Why not?