nly my brother, and I
should have been carried away by hope. But I am not in your place. It is
by your voice that this woman speaks, whom I do not know, and against
whom I must be on my guard, for the sole reason that it is a paralytic
who has told this story."

She could not restrain the tears that came to her eyes, and she let them
flow silently, finding nothing to reply.

"I am sorry to pain you," he said.

"I saw only Florentin's liberty."

"I do not say this testimony of Madame Dammauville will not influence the
judge, and, above all, the jury; but I must warn you that you will expose
yourself to a terrible deception if you believe that her testimony alone
will give your brother liberty. It is not on a testimony of this kind or
of this quality that the law decides; better than we, it knows to what
illusions people can lend themselves when it is the question of a crime
that absorbs and excites the public curiosity. There are some witnesses
who, with the best faith in the world, believe they have seen the most
extraordinary things which only existed in their imaginations; and there
are people who accuse themselves rather than say nothing."

He heaped words on words, as if, in trying to convince Phillis, he might
hope to convince himself; but when the sound of his words faded, he was
obliged to declare to himself that, whatever the paralysis of this woman
might be, it had not, in this instance, produced either defect of sight
or of mind. She had seen, indeed, the tall man with long hair and curled
beard, dressed like a gentleman, who was not Florentin. When she related
the story of the lamp and the curtain cords, she knew what she was
saying.

In his first alarm he had been very near betraying himself. Without doubt
he should have told himself that this incident of the curtains might
prove a trap; but all passed so rapidly that he never imagined that,
exactly at the moment when Caffie raised the lamp to give him light,
there was a woman opposite looking at him, and who saw him so plainly
that she had not forgotten him. He thought to use all precautions on his
side in drawing the curtains, when, on the contrary, he would have done
better had he left them undrawn. Without doubt the widow of the attorney
would have been a witness of a part of the scene, but in the shadow she
would not have distinguished his features as she was able to do when he
placed himself before the window under the light. But this idea did no