In what manner did he listen to the love-sick
confidences of his prisoner? In what sadly sympathetic tones did he
reply to the glowing pictures she drew of her lover? For she spoke of
little else, and Licquet listened silently until the moment when, in a
burst of feeling, he took both her hands, and as if grieved at seeing
her duped, exclaiming with hypocritical regard: "My poor child! Is it
not better to tell you everything?" made her believe that Le Chevalier
had denounced her. She refused at first to believe it. Why should her
lover have done such an infamous thing? But Licquet gave reasons. Le
Chevalier, while in the Temple had learned, from Vannier or others, of
her relations with Chauvel, and in revenge had set the police on the
track of his faithless friend. And so the man for whom she had
sacrificed her life no longer loved her! Licquet, in order to torture
her, overwhelmed the unhappy woman with the intentionally clumsy
consolation that only accentuates grief. She wept much, and had but one
thing to say.

"I should like to save him in spite of his ingratitude."

This was not at all what the detective wished. He had hoped she would,
in her turn, accuse the man who had betrayed her; but he could gain
nothing on this point. She felt no desire for revenge. The letters she
wrote to Le Chevalier (Licquet encouraged correspondence between
prisoners) are full of the sadness of a broken but still loving heart.

"It is not when a friend is unfortunate that one should reproach him,
and I am far from doing so to you, in spite of your conduct as regards
me. You know I did everything for you,--I am not reproaching you for
it,--and after all, you have denounced me! I forgive you with all my
heart, if that can do you any good, but I know your reason for being so
unjust to me; you thought I had abandoned you, but I swear to you I had
not."

There was not much information in that for Licquet, and in the hope of
learning something, he excited Mme. Acquet strongly against d'Ache.
According to him d'Ache was the one who first "sold them all"; it was
he who caused Le Chevalier to be arrested, to rid himself of a
troublesome rival after having compromised him; it was to d'Ache alone
that the prisoners owed all their misfortunes. And Licquet found a
painful echo of his insinuations in all Mme. Acquet's letters to her
lover; but he found nothing more. "You know that Delorriere d'Ache is a
knave, a scoundrel; that he is the cause of