Jean Desmarais; and I took especial care that the Necessitarian, who
would only have thought robbery and murder pieces of ill-luck, should
undergo a most rigorous examination. I remembered that he had seen me
put the packet into the escritoire; and this circumstance was alone
sufficient to arouse my suspicion. Desmarais bared his breast
gracefully to the magistrate. "Would a man, Sir," he said, "a man of my
youth, suffer such a scar as that, if he could help it?" The magistrate
laughed: frivolity is often a rogue's best policy, if he did but know
it. One finds it very difficult to think a coxcomb can commit robbery
and murder. Howbeit Desmarais came off triumphantly; and immediately
after this examination, which had been his second one, and instigated
solely at my desire, he came to me with a blush of virtuous indignation
on his thin cheeks. "He did not presume," he said, with a bow
profounder than ever, "to find fault with Monsieur le Comte; it was his
fate to be the victim of ungrateful suspicion: but philosophical truths
could not always conquer the feelings of the man, and he came to request
his dismissal." I gave it him with pleasure.

I must now state my own feelings on the matter; but I shall do so
briefly. In my own mind, I repeat, I was fully impressed with the
conviction that Gerald was the real and the head criminal; and thrice
did I resolve to repair to Devereux Court, where he still resided, to
lie in wait for him, to reproach him with his guilt, and at the sword's
point in deadly combat to seek its earthly expiation. I spare the
reader a narration of the terrible struggles which nature, conscience,
all scruples and prepossessions of education and of blood, held with
this resolution, the unholiness of which I endeavoured to clothe with
the name of justice to Isora. Suffice it to say that this resolution I
forewent at last; and I did so more from a feeling that, despite my own
conviction of Gerald's guilt, one rational doubt rested upon the