ich is connected with the Palais de Justice by a narrow
passage, especially reserved for official use. The prisoners' morning
rations had just been served to them, and the governor was walking up
and down the courtyard, in the company of Inspector Gevrol. As soon as
he perceived M. Segmuller he hastened toward him and asked if he had not
come about the prisoner May.

As the magistrate nodded assent, the governor at once added: "Well I was
only just now telling Inspector Gevrol that I was very well satisfied
with May's behavior. It has not only been quite unnecessary to place
him in the strait-waistcoat again, but his mood seems to have changed
entirely. He eats with a good appetite; he is as gay as a lark, and he
constantly laughs and jests with his keeper."

Gevrol had pricked up his ears when he heard himself named by the
governor, and considering this mention to be a sufficient introduction,
he thought there would be no impropriety in his listening to the
conversation. Accordingly, he approached the others, and noted with
some satisfaction the troubled glances which Lecoq and the magistrate
exchanged.

M. Segmuller was plainly perplexed. May's gay manner to which the
governor of the Depot alluded might perhaps have been assumed for the
purpose of sustaining his character as a jester and buffoon, it might be
due to a certainty of defeating the judicial inquiry, or, who knows? the
prisoner had perhaps received some favorable news from outside.

With Lecoq's last words still ringing in his ears, it is no wonder that
the magistrate should have dwelt on this last supposition. "Are you
quite sure," he asked, "that no communication from outside can reach the
inmates of the secret cells?"

The governor of the Depot was cut to the quick by M. Segmuller's implied
doubt. What! were his subordinates suspected? Was his own professional
honesty impugned? He could not help lifting his hands to heaven in mute
protest against such an unjust charge.

"Am I sure?" he exclaimed. "Then you can never have visited the secret
cells. You have no idea, then, of their situation; you are unacquainted
with the triple bolts that secure the doors; the grating that shuts out
the sunlight, to say nothing of the guard who walks beneath the windows
day and night. Why, a bird couldn't even reach the prisoners in those
cells."

Such a description was bound to reassure the most skeptical mind, and M.
Segmuller breathed again: "Now that I am easy