she has had to endure the most frightful penance ever
inflicted on a woman."

"She gasped for breath, trembling, as if she had addressed the last
words to her son and as if he stood by her bedside.

"Then she added:

"'You will tell him also, monsieur, that I never again saw-the other.'

"Once more she ceased speaking, then, in a broken voice, she said:

"'Leave me now, I beg of you. I want to die all alone, since they are
not with me.'"

Maitre Le Brument added:

"And I left the house, monsieurs, crying like a fool, so bitterly,
indeed, that my coachman turned round to stare at me.

"And to think that, every day, dramas like this are being enacted all
around us!

"I have not found the son--that son--well, say what you like about him,
but I call him that criminal son!"

THE HAND

All were crowding around M. Bermutier, the judge, who was giving his
opinion about the Saint-Cloud mystery. For a month this in explicable
crime had been the talk of Paris. Nobody could make head or tail of it.

M. Bermutier, standing with his back to the fireplace, was talking,
citing the evidence, discussing the various theories, but arriving at no
conclusion.

Some women had risen, in order to get nearer to him, and were standing
with their eyes fastened on the clean-shaven face of the judge, who was
saying such weighty things. They, were shaking and trembling, moved
by fear and curiosity, and by the eager and insatiable desire for the
horrible, which haunts the soul of every woman. One of them, paler than
the others, said during a pause:

"It's terrible. It verges on the supernatural. The truth will never be
known."

The judge turned to her:

"True, madame, it is likely that the actual facts will never be
discovered. As for the word 'supernatural' which you have just used,
it has nothing to do with the matter. We are in the presence of a very
cleverly conceived and executed crime, so well enshrouded in mystery
that we cannot disentangle it from the involved circumstances which
surround it. But once I had to take charge of an affair in which the
uncanny seemed to play a part. In fact, the case became so confused that
it had to be given up."

Several women exclaimed at once:

"Oh! Tell us about it!"

M. Bermutier smiled in a dignified manner, as a judge should, and went
on:

"Do not think, however, that I, for one minute, ascribed anything in the
case to supernatural influences. I believe only in normal cause