ir joy subsided, night had fallen, and
Bernardet, preoccupied, wished to shut himself up so that he might
reflect on all that had happened, and perhaps to work a little, even
to-day.

"It is thy fete day, Bernardet. Wilt thou not rest to-day?"

"I can rest at dinner, dear. Until then, I must use the time reading
over a mass of evidence."

"Then thou wilt need a lamp?" asked Mme. Bernardet.

"Yes, my dear; light the lamp."

Next to their bedchamber M. Bernardet had fitted up a little room for
his private use. It was a tiny den, in which was a mahogany table loaded
with books and papers, and at which he worked when he had time, reading,
annotating, copying from the papers, and collecting extracts for hours
at a time. No one was allowed to enter this room, filled with old
papers. Mme. Bernardet well called it "a nest of microbes." Bernardet
found pleasure in this sporadic place, which in Summer was stifling. In
Winter he worked without a fire.

Mme. Bernardet was unhappy as she saw that their holiday was spoiled.
But she very well knew that when her husband was devoured with
curiosity, carried away by a desire to elucidate a puzzle, there was
nothing to be said. He listened to no remonstrances, and the daughters
knew that when they asked if their father was not coming to renew his
games with them they were obliged to content themselves with the excuse
which they knew so well from having heard it so often: "Papa is studying
out a crime!"

Bernardet was anxious to read over his notes, the verification of his
hopes, of those so-called certainties of to-day. That is why he wished
to be alone. As soon as he had closed the door he at once, from among
the enormous piles of dust-laden books and files of old newspapers, with
the unerring instinct of the habitual searcher who rummages through book
stalls, drew forth a gray-covered pamphlet in which he had read, with
feverish astonishment, the experiments and report of Dr. Vernois upon
the application of photography in criminal researches. He quickly seated
himself, and with trembling fingers eagerly turned over the leaves of
the book so often read and studied, and came to the report of the member
of the Academy of Medicine; he compared it with the proof submitted by
Dr. Bourion, of the Medical Society, in which it was stated that the
most learned savants had seen nothing.

"Seen nothing, or wished to see nothing, perhaps!" he murmured.

The light fell upon the photograph