“And what do you think I have been doing these hundred and thirty mortal
hours since I have been alone in this prison,--alone to confront a
terrible accusation, and a still more terrible emergency?”
“That is the difficulty, Jacques: you are the victim of your own
imagination. And who could help it in your place? M. Folgat said so
only yesterday. There is no man living, who, after four days’ close
confinement, can keep his mind cool. Grief and solitude are bad
counsellors. Jacques, come to yourself; listen to your dearest friends
who speak to you through me. Jacques, your Dionysia beseeches you.
Speak!”
“I cannot.”
“Why not?”
She waited for some seconds; and, as he did not reply, she said, not
without a slight accent of bitterness in her voice,--
“Is it not the first duty of an innocent man to establish his
innocence?”
The prisoner, with a movement of despair, clasped his hands over his
brow. Then bending over Dionysia, so that she felt his breath in her
hair, he said,--
“And when he cannot, when he cannot, establish his innocence?”
She drew back, pale unto death, tottering so that she had to lean
against the wall, and cast upon Jacques de Boiscoran glances in which
the whole horror of her soul was clearly expressed.
“What do you say?” she stammered. “O God!”
He laughed, the wretched man! with that laugh which is the last
utterance of despair. And then he replied,--
“I say that there are circumstances which upset our reason; unheard-of
circumstances, which could make one doubt of one’s self. I say that
every thing accuses me, that every thing overwhelms me, that every thing
turns against me. I say, that if I were in M. Galpin’s place, and if he
were in mine, I should act just as he does.”
“That is insanity!” cried Dionysia.
But Jacques de Boiscoran did not hear her. All the bitterness of the
last days rose within him: he turned red, and became excited. At last,
with gasping vice, he broke forth,--
“Establish my innocence! Ah! that is easily said. But how? No, I am not
guilty: but a crime has been committed; and for this crime justice will
have a culprit. If it is not I who fired at Count Claudieuse, and set
Valpinson on fire, who is it? ‘Where were you,’ they ask me, ‘at the
time of the murder?’ Where was I? Can I tell it? To clear myself is to
accuse others. And if I should be mistaken? Or if, not being mistaken,
I should be unable to prove the truthfulness of my accusation? The
murderer and the incendiary, of course, took all possible precautions to
escape detection, and to let the punishment fall upon me. I was warned
beforehand. Ah, if we could always foresee, could know beforehand! How
can I defend myself? On the first day I said, ‘Such a charge cannot
reach me: it is a cloud that a breath will scatter.’ Madman that I was!
The cloud has become an avalanche, and I may be crushed. I am neither a
child nor a coward; and I have always met phantoms face to face. I have
measured the danger, and I know it is fearful.”