, he uttered a groan that made the men hurry
off. The public prosecutor's private secretary and the governor of the
prison had already made their escape from the scene.

What had become of that iron spirit; of the decision which was a match
in swiftness for the eye; of the nature in which thought and action
flashed forth together like one flame; of the sinews hardened by three
spells of labor on the hulks, and by three escapes, the muscles which
had acquired the metallic temper of a savage's limbs? Iron will yield to
a certain amount of hammering or persistent pressure; its impenetrable
molecules, purified and made homogeneous by man, may become
disintegrated, and without being in a state of fusion the metal had lost
its power of resistance. Blacksmiths, locksmiths, tool-makers sometimes
express this state by saying the iron is retting, appropriating a word
applied exclusively to hemp, which is reduced to pulp and fibre by
maceration. Well, the human soul, or, if you will, the threefold powers
of body, heart, and intellect, under certain repeated shocks, get into
such a condition as fibrous iron. They too are disintegrated. Science
and law and the public seek a thousand causes for the terrible
catastrophes on railways caused by the rupture of an iron rail, that of
Bellevue being a famous instance; but no one has asked the evidence
of real experts in such matters, the blacksmiths, who all say the same
thing, "The iron was stringy!" The danger cannot be foreseen. Metal
that has gone soft, and metal that has preserved its tenacity, both look
exactly alike.

Priests and examining judges often find great criminals in this state.
The awful experiences of the Assize Court and the "last toilet" commonly
produce this dissolution of the nervous system, even in the strongest
natures. Then confessions are blurted by the most firmly set lips; then
the toughest hearts break; and, strange to say, always at the moment
when these confessions are useless, when this weakness as of death
snatches from the man the mask of innocence which made Justice
uneasy--for it always is uneasy when the criminal dies without
confessing his crime.

Napoleon went through this collapse of every human power on the field of
Waterloo.

At eight in the morning, when the warder of the better cells entered the
room where Jacques Collin was confined, he found him pale and calm, like
a man who has collected all his strength by sheer determination.

"It is th