out
my candle: suddenly a bright light fell upon the window. I was amazed,
and utterly confused; for I was in that state of sleepiness which is not
yet sleep, but very much like it. I said to myself, 'What can this be?'
but I did not get up: I only was roused by a great noise, like the crash
of a falling wall; and then I jumped out of bed, and said to myself,
'The house is on fire!' What increased my anxiety was the fact, which
I at once recollected, that there were in the courtyard, and all around
the house, some sixteen thousand bundles of dry wood, which had been
cut last year. Half dressed, I rushed downstairs. I was very much
bewildered, I confess, and could hardly succeed in opening the outer
door: still I did open it at last. But I had barely put my foot on
the threshold, when I felt in my right side, a little above the hip, a
fierce pain, and heard at the same time, quite close to me, a shot."

The magistrate interrupted him by a gesture.

"Your statement, count, is certainly remarkably clear. But there is one
point we must try to establish. Were you really fired at the moment you
showed yourself at the door?"

"Yes, sir."

"Then the murderer must have been quite near on the watch. He must have
known that the fire would bring you out; and he was lying in wait for
you."

"That was and still is my impression," declared the count.

M. Galpin turned to M. Daubigeon.

"Then," he said to him, "the murder is the principal fact with which we
have to do; and the fire is only an aggravating circumstance,--the
means which the criminal employed in order to succeed the better in
perpetrating his crime."

Then, returning to the count, he said,--

"Pray go on."

"When I felt I was wounded," continued Count Claudieuse, "my first
impulse was instinctively to rush forward to the place from which the
gun seemed to have been fired at me. I had not proceeded three yards,
when I felt the same pain once more in the shoulder and in the neck.
This second wound was more serous than the first; for I lost my
consciousness, my head began to swim and I fell."

"You had not seen the murderer?"

"I beg your pardon. At the moment when I fell, I thought I saw a man
rush forth from behind a pile of fagots, cross the courtyard, and
disappear in the fields."

"Would you recognize him?"

"No."

"But you saw how he was dressed: you can give me a description?"

"No, I cannot. I felt as if there was a veil before my eyes; and he