!
Patience, if you consider it your duty to denounce me, go and do so. All
that I ask is that I may not be condemned without a hearing; I prefer
the bar of justice to that of mere opinion."

I rushed out of the cottage and returned to the chateau. However, not
wishing to make a scandal before the servants, and knowing quite well
that they could not hide Edmee's real condition from me, I went and shut
myself up in the room I usually occupied.

But in the evening, just as I was leaving it to get news of the two
patients, Mademoiselle Leblanc again told me that some one wished to
speak with me outside. I noticed that her face betrayed a sense of joy
as well as fear. I concluded that they had come to arrest me, and I
suspected (rightly, as it transpired) that Mademoiselle Leblanc had
denounced me. I went to the window, and saw some of the mounted police
in the courtyard.

"Good," I said; "let my destiny take its course."

But, before quitting, perhaps forever, this house in which I was
leaving my soul, I wished to see Edmee again for the last time. I walked
straight to her room. Mademoiselle Leblanc tried to throw herself in
front of the door; I pushed her aside so roughly that she fell, and, I
believe, hurt herself slightly. She immediately filled the house with
her cries; and later, in the trial, made a great pother about what she
was pleased to call an attempt to murder her. I at once entered Edmee's
room; there I found the abbe and the doctor. I listened in silence to
what the latter was saying. I learnt that the wounds in themselves were
not mortal, that they would not even be very serious, had not a violent
disturbance in the brain complicated the evil and made him fear tetanus.
This frightful word fell upon me like a death sentence. In America I had
seen many men die of this terrible malady, the result of wounds received
in the war. I approached the bed. The abbe was so alarmed that he did
not think of preventing me. I took Edmee's hand, cold and lifeless, as
ever. I kissed it a last time, and, without saying a single word to the
others, went and gave myself up to the police.

XXIV

I was immediately thrown into prison at La Chatre. The public prosecutor
for the district of Issoudun took in hand this case of the attempted
murder of Mademoiselle de Mauprat, and obtained permission to have
a monitory published on the morrow. He went to the village of
Sainte-Severe, and then to the farms in the neighbourhoo