"Do you believe it?" I asked Monsieur de Vargnes.

"Absolutely," he replied. "And the most terrible thing about it is,
that the villain is right when he defies me to force him to confess his
crime publicly, for I see no means of obtaining a confession, none
whatever. For a moment, I thought of magnetism, but who could magnetize
that man with those pale, cold, bright eyes? With such eyes, he would
force the magnetizer to denounce himself as the culprit."

And then he said, with a deep sigh:

"Ah! Formerly there was something good about justice!"

And when he saw my inquiring looks, he added in a firm and perfectly
convinced voice:

"Formerly, justice had torture at its command."

"Upon my word," I replied, with all an author's unconscious and simple
egotism, "it is quite certain that without the torture, this strange
tale will have no conclusion, and that is very unfortunate, as far as
regards the story I intended to make out of it."



_An Uncomfortable Bed_


One autumn I went to stay for the hunting season with some friends in a
chateau in Picardy.