that question a thousand times, without getting at any rational solution, when they came to fetch me on the following morning to renew my examination. After the usual questions, a door was opened, and two gendarmes entered, supporting a female. It was Francine—Francine pale, and altered so as to be scarcely recognizable. On seeing me, she fainted; and when I wished to approach her, I was withheld by the gendarmes. They took her away, and I alone remained with the examining judge, who asked me if the sight of the unfortunate woman did not prompt me to confess all? I protested my innocence, asserting that I did not know till that instant that Francine was ill. I was led back to prison, but not to solitary confinement, and I could then hope that I might be informed of all the events of which I was so singularly the victim. I questioned the jailor, but he would not answer me; I wrote to Francine, although I was told that the letters would be detained by the judge, and that she was dismissed. I was on thorns, and at last determined on sending for counsel, who, after having learnt the accusation, told me that I was charged with attempting to assassinate Francine. On the very day I left her, she had been found expiring, stabbed with a knife in five places, and bathed in blood. My precipitate flight—the secret carrying away of my clothes, which it was known that I had taken from one place to another, as if to elude the search of justice—the broken shutter in my room—the footmark which resembled mine,—all tended to confirm the suspicions of my guilt, and my disguise still more corroborated it.
It was thought that I only disguised myself and returned, to learn whether she had died without accusing me. One particular, which would have been in my favour under any other circumstances, now aggravaged the charge against me; as soon as the physicians would allow Francine to speak, she declared that she had stabbed herself, in despair, at finding that she was
