r blue eyes seemed
German. A true image of my hapless country. I felt he was a victim
and not a murderer. At the moment when he passed beneath my window he
chanced to cast about him the painful, melancholy smile of an insane man
who suddenly recovers for a time a fleeting gleam of reason. That smile
was assuredly not the smile of a murderer. When I saw the jailer I
questioned him about his new prisoner.

"He has not spoken since I put him in his cell," answered the man. "He
is sitting down with his head in his hands and is either sleeping or
reflecting about his crime. The French say he'll get his reckoning
to-morrow morning and be shot in twenty-four hours."

That evening I stopped short under the window of the prison during the
short time I was allowed to take exercise in the prison yard. We talked
together, and he frankly related to me his strange affair, replying
with evident truthfulness to my various questions. After that first
conversation I no longer doubted his innocence; I asked, and obtained
the favor of staying several hours with him. I saw him again at
intervals, and the poor lad let me in without concealment to all his
thoughts. He believed himself both innocent and guilty. Remembering the
horrible temptation which he had had the strength to resist, he feared
he might have done in sleep, in a fit of somnambulism, the crime he had
dreamed of awake.

"But your companion?" I said to him.

"Oh!" he cried eagerly. "Wilhelm is incapable of--"

He did not even finish his sentence. At that warm defence, so full of
youth and manly virtue, I pressed his hand.

"When he woke," continued Prosper, "he must have been terrified and lost
his head; no doubt he fled."

"Without awaking you?" I said. "Then surely your defence is easy;
Wahlenfer's valise cannot have been stolen."

Suddenly he burst into tears.

"Oh, yes!" he cried, "I am innocent! I have not killed a man! I remember
my dreams. I was playing at base with my schoolmates. I couldn't have
cut off the head of a man while I dreamed I was running."

Then, in spite of these gleams of hope, which gave him at times some
calmness, he felt a remorse which crushed him. He had, beyond all
question, raised his arm to kill that man. He judged himself; and he
felt that his heart was not innocent after committing that crime in his
mind.

"And yet, I _am_ good!" he cried. "Oh, my poor mother! Perhaps at this
moment she is cheerfully playing boston with the neighbo