my dears, if that happens. But it is not the
idea of filthy lucre which has urged me on, and I believe that I have
certainly made a great stride in judiciary instruction, all owing to my
kodak. It would be too long an explanation and, perhaps, a perfectly
useless one. Let us go to dinner. I am as hungry as a wolf."

He ate, truly, with a good appetite, scarcely stopped to tell how the
assassin was under lock and key. The man had been measured and had
become a number in the collection, always increasing, of accused persons
in the catalogue continued each day for the Museum of Crime.

"Ah! He is not happy," said Bernardet between two spoonfuls of soup.
"Not happy, not happy at all! Not happy, and astonished--protesting,
moreover, his innocence, as they all do. It is customary."

"But," sweetly asked good little Mme. Bernardet, "what if he is
innocent?" And the three little girls, raising their heads, looked at
their father, as if to repeat their mother's question. The eldest
murmured: "Yes, what if mamma is right?"

Bernardet shrugged his shoulders.

"To hear them, if one listened to them, one would believe them all
innocent, and the crimes would have to commit themselves. If this one is
innocent I shall be astonished, as if I should see snow fall in Paris in
June; he will have to prove that he is innocent. These things prove
themselves. Give me some more soup, Melanie."

As Mme. Bernardet turned a ladleful of hot soup into her husband's plate
she softly asked: "Are there no innocent ones condemned? Do you never
deceive yourself?" Bernardet did not stop eating. "I cannot say--no one
is infallible, no one--the shrewdest deceive themselves; they are
sometimes duped. But it is rare, very rare. As well to say that it does
not happen--Lesurques, yes (and the three little girls opened wide their
large blue eyes as at a play), the Lesurques of the Courier de Lyon, who
has made you weep so many times at the theatre at Montmartre; one would
like to revise his trial to reinstate him, but no one has been able to
do it. I have studied his trial--by my faith, I swear, I would condemn
him still--ah! what good soup!"

"But this one to-day?" asked Mme. Bernardet; "art thou certain? What is
his name?"

"Dantin--Jacques Dantin. Oh! He is a gentleman. A very fine man,
elegant, indeed. Some Bohemian of the upper class, who evidently needed
money, and who--Rovere had some valuables in his safe. The occasion made
the thief--and there