have done, I am forwarding to the public
prosecutor a retraction of my deposition. You will know how to
take advantage of this document.

"In virtue of a will formally drawn up, restitution will be made,
Monsieur l'Abbe, of the moneys belonging to your Order which you
so imprudently devoted to my use, as a result of your paternal
affection for me.

"And so, farewell. Farewell, colossal image of Evil and
Corruption; farewell--to you who, if started on the right road,
might have been greater than Ximenes, greater than Richelieu! You
have kept your promises. I find myself once more just as I was on
the banks of the Charente, after enjoying, by your help, the
enchantments of a dream. But, unfortunately, it is not now in the
waters of my native place that I shall drown the errors of a boy;
but in the Seine, and my hole is a cell in the Conciergerie.

"Do not regret me: my contempt for you is as great as my
admiration.

"LUCIEN."

"_Recantation_.

"I, the undersigned, hereby declare that I retract, without
reservation, all that I deposed at my examination to-day before
Monsieur Camusot.

"The Abbe Carlos Herrera always called himself my spiritual
father, and I was misled by the word father used in another sense
by the judge, no doubt under a misapprehension.

"I am aware that, for political ends, and to quash certain secrets
concerning the Cabinets of Spain and of the Tuileries, some
obscure diplomatic agents tried to show that the Abbe Carlos
Herrera was a forger named Jacques Collin; but the Abbe Carlos
Herrera never told me anything about the matter excepting that he
was doing his best to obtain evidence of the death or of the
continued existence of Jacques Collin.

"LUCIEN DE RUBEMPRE.

"AT THE CONCIERGERIE, May 15th, 1830."

The fever for suicide had given Lucien immense clearness of mind, and
the swiftness of hand familiar to authors in the fever of composition.
The impetus was so strong within him that these four documents were all
written within half an hour; he folded them in a wrapper, fastened
with wafers, on which he impressed with the strength of delirium the
coat-of-arms engraved on a seal-ring he wore, and he then laid the
packet very conspicuously in the middle of the floor.

Certainly it would have been impossible t