moment when he passed beneath my window he chanced to cast about him
the painful, melancholy smile of an insane man who suddenly recovers
for a time a fleeting gleam of reason. That smile was assuredly not
the smile of a murderer. When I saw the jailer I questioned him about
his new prisoner.

"He has not spoken since I put him in his cell," answered the man. "He
is sitting down with his head in his hands and is either sleeping or
reflecting about his crime. The French say he'll get his reckoning
to-morrow morning and be shot in twenty-four hours."

That evening I stopped short under the window of the prison during the
short time I was allowed to take exercise in the prison yard. We
talked together, and he frankly related to me his strange affair,
replying with evident truthfulness to my various questions. After that
first conversation I no longer doubted his innocence; I asked, and
obtained the favor of staying several hours with him. I saw him again
at intervals, and the poor lad let me in without concealment to all
his thoughts. He believed himself both innocent and guilty.
Remembering the horrible temptation which he had had the strength to
resist, he feared he might have done in sleep, in a fit of
somnambulism, the crime he had dreamed of awake.

"But your companion?" I said to him.

"Oh!" he cried eagerly. "Wilhelm is incapable of--"

He did not even finish his sentence. At that warm defence, so full of
youth and manly virtue, I pressed his hand.