exercise, he turned to Father Absinthe, placed the lantern on a stone,
wiped his hands with his pocket-handkerchief, and said: "Now I know
everything!"

"Well, that is saying a great deal!"

"When I say everything, I mean all that is connected with the episode of
the drama which ended in that bloody bout in the hovel. This expanse of
earth covered with snow is a white page upon which the people we are
in search of have written, not only their movements, their goings,
and comings, but also their secret thoughts, their alternate hopes and
anxieties. What do these footprints say to you, Papa Absinthe? To me
they are alive like the persons who made them; they breathe, speak,
accuse!"

The old agent was saying to himself: "Certainly, this fellow is
intelligent, undeniably shrewd; but he is very disagreeable."

"These are the facts as I have read them," pursued Lecoq. "When the
murderer repaired to the Poivriere with the two women, his companion--I
should say his accomplice--came here to wait. He was a tall man of
middle age; he wore a soft hat and a shaggy brown overcoat; he was,
moreover, probably married, or had been so, as he had a wedding-ring on
the little finger of his right hand--"

His companion's despairing gestures obliged the speaker to pause.
This description of a person whose existence had but just now been
demonstrated, these precise details given in a tone of absolute
certainty, completely upset all Father Absinthe's ideas, increasing his
perplexity beyond all bounds.