t morning many
of the witnesses and prisoners were brought before Clarissa. Thus there
were Bach, the Bancals, the soldier Colard, Rose Feral, Missonier, and
little Madeleine Bancal. Bousquier was ill. The sight of the crushed,
slouching, phantom-like creatures, intimidated by a hundred torments,
revengefully ready for any deed, disturbed her to the core, and gave
her at the same time a feeling of indelible contamination. "Is she the
one?" each of the unfortunates was asked--and with insolent
indifference they answered: "It is she." Missonier alone stood there
laughing like an idiot.

Clarissa was amazed. She had not expected that the answers would be
characterized by such assurance, such a matter-of-fact air. With inward
sobs she held from her what was undeniable in the present situation,
and shudderingly sought a path in her memory to that past situation on
which the present was founded and which she was asked to verify. Her
agitated spirit crept back to her earlier years, back to her youth, to
her childhood, in order to discover her inimical second-self; that
which had seemed weird and strange gradually became the essence and
centre of her being, and the fateful night in Bancal's house turned,
like the rest of the world, into a vision of blood and wounds.

But athwart the gloomy fancies the way led to Bastide Grammont; a
flowery path among burning houses. It seemed fine to her to be assured
of his guilt. Perchance he had pressed his lips to hers before he had
clutched the murderous knife. She coupled her own obscurely felt guilt
with his greater one. That which cut him off from humanity bound him to
her. His reasons for the deed? She did not concern herself about them.
No doubt it had struck root when she had first beheld him, when he had
swallowed in a breath all the wood, all the springtime. No matter
whether he dipped his hands in the sunlight or in blood, both pertained
to his image, to her mysterious passion, and Fualdes was the evil
genius and the destructive principle. "Ah," she reflected in her
singular musing, "had I known of it, I should have committed the deed
myself and might have been a heroine like Charlotte Corday!" Why,
however, did he deny it, why was he silent? Why that look of
overwhelming contempt, which she could not forget and which still
scorched her skin like a brand of infamy? Was he too proud to bow to a
sentence which put his crime on a level with that of any highwayman? No
doubt he did n