equire all your efforts to wipe off this
blot upon your honour. Your enemies will not respect your delicacy of
feeling. They will press you so hard that you will either be obliged to
submit to a shameful sentence, or to wound your feelings of honour in
proving your innocence. You see I am confiding in you, for in certain
cases honour seems so precious a thing to me that I am ready to defend it
with all the power of the law. Pay me back, then, in the same coin, trust
in me entirely, tell me the whole story without any reserves, and you may
rely upon my good offices. All will be well if you are innocent, for I
shall not be the less a judge because I am your friend; but if you are
guilty I am sorry for you, for I warn you that I shall be just."

After doing my best to express my gratitude to him, I said that my
position did not oblige me to make any reservations on account of honour,
and that I had, consequently, no informal statement to make him.

"The midwife," I added, "is absolutely unknown to me. She is most likely
an abandoned woman, who with her worthy companion wants to cheat me of my
money."

"I should be delighted to think so," he answered, "but admitting the
fact, see how chance favours her, and makes it a most difficult thing for
you to prove your innocence.

"The young lady disappeared three months ago. She was known to be your
intimate friend, you called upon her at all hours; you spent a
considerable time with her the day before she disappeared, and no one
knows what has become of her; but everyone's suspicions point at you, and
paid spies are continually dogging your steps. The midwife sent me a
requisition yesterday by her counsel, Vauversin. She says that the
pregnant lady you brought to her house is the same whom Madame X. C. V.
is searching for. She also says that you both wore black dominoes, and
the police have ascertained that you were both at the ball in black
dominoes on the same night as that on which the midwife says you came to
her house; you are also known to have left the ball-room together. All
this, it is true, does not constitute full proof of your guilt, but it
makes one tremble for your innocence."

"What cause have I to tremble?"

"What cause! Why a false witness, easily enough hired for a little money,
might swear with impunity that he saw you come from the opera together;
and a coachman in the same way might swear he had taken you to the
midwife's. In that case I should be compel