illac to his room. The public prosecutor, whose ideas
had been somewhat mixed before, was now completely muddled by this
unheard-of attack upon his dignity, and fell back exhausted in his
chair.

"All poor drinkers!" said the notary to Monsieur de Carrier who was left
alone with him, for the prosecutor, half suffocated with indignation and
intoxication, could no longer be counted as one of them. "Here they are,
all drunk, from just a few glasses of wine."

The notary shook his head with a mysterious air.

"These things, though, are plain enough to me," said he at last; "first,
this Monsieur Marillac has not a very strong head and tells pretty
tedious stories when drunk; then his friend has a way of taking kirsch
for water which I can understand only in extreme cases; but the Baron is
the one who astonished me most. Did you notice how he shook our friend
who has just fallen on the floor? As to the Baron pretending that he
was drunk and thus excusing himself, I do not believe one word of it; he
drank nothing but water. There were times this evening when he appeared
very strange indeed! There is some deviltry underneath all this;
Monsieur de Carrier, rest assured there is some deviltry underneath it
all."

"I am the public prosecutor--they can not remove the body without me,"
stammered the weak voice of the magistrate, who, after trying in vain to
recover his equilibrium, lay flat upon the floor.

CHAPTER XXI. A STRATAGEM

Instead of joining the persons who were carrying Marillac away,
Christian went into the garden after leaving the dining-room, in quest
of the fresh air which he gave as an excuse for leaving his guests. In
fact, he felt oppressed almost to suffocation by the emotions he had
undergone during the last few hours. The dissimulation which prudence
made a necessity and honor a duty had aggravated the suffering by
protracted concealment.

For some time Christian walked rapidly among the paths and trees in the
park. Bathing his burning brow in the cool night air, he sought to calm
the secret agitation and the boiling blood that were raging within him,
in the midst of which his reason struggled and fought like a ship about
to be wrecked. He used all his strength to recover his self-possession,
so as to be able to master the perils and troubles which surrounded him
with a calm if not indifferent eye; in one word, to regain that control
over himself that he had lost several times during the supper. Hi