injured.

Jacques Dantin looked at him at the same moment when the Magistrate,
with a glance keener, more piercing than ever, seemed to search his very
soul. The young man was now pallid and unmanned.

At length Prades pronounced some words. What did he want of him? What
frame was he talking of? And who was this other dealer of whom the
Magistrate spoke and whom he had called a second time? Where was this
witness with "the new deposition?"

"One is enough!" he said, casting a ferocious look at Mme. Colard, who,
on a sign from M. Ginory, had entered, pale and full of fear.

He added in a menacing tone:

"One is even too much!"

The fingers of his right hand contracted, as if around a knife handle.
At this moment Bernardet, who was studying each gesture which the man
made, was convinced that the murderer of Rovere was there. He saw that
hand armed with the knife, the one which had been found in his pocket,
striking his victim, gashing the ex-Consul's throat.

But then, "Dantin?" An accomplice, without doubt. The head, of which the
adventurer was the arm. Because, in the dead man's eye, Dantin's image
appeared, reflected as clear proof, like an accusation, showing the
person who was last seen in Rovere's supreme agony. Jacques Dantin was
there--the eye spoke.

Mme. Colard's testimony no longer permitted M. Ginory to doubt. This
Charles Prades was certainly the man who sold the portrait.

Nothing could be proved except that the two men had never met. No sign
of emotion showed that Dantin had ever seen the young man before. The
latter alone betrayed himself when he was going to Mazas with the
original of the portrait painted by Baudry.

But, however, as the Magistrate underlined it with precision, the fact
alone of recognizing Dantin constituted against Prades a new charge.
Added to the testimony, to the formal affirmation of the shopkeeper,
this charge became grave.

Coldly, M. Ginory said to his registrar:

"An order!"

Then, when Favarel had taken a paper engraved at the top, which Prades
tried to decipher, the Magistrate began to question him. And as M.
Ginory spoke slowly, Favarel filled in the blank places which made a
free man, a prisoner.

"You are called?" demanded M. Ginory.

"Prades."

"Your first name?"

"Henri."

"You said Charles to the Commissary of Police."

"Henri-Charles--Charles--Henri."

The Magistrate did not even make a sign to Favarel, seated before the
table, and who wrote