Within an Inch of His Life by Emile Gaboriau (good summer reads .TXT) 📖

over Jacques’s obstinacy, and that, as soon as she had heard what he had to say, she would feel reassured. And instead of that—

“What a misfortune!” she cried. “You have taken up these fearful notions, and you will not abandon them!”

“I must keep silent.”

“You cannot. You have not considered!—”

“Not considered,” he repeated.

And in a lower tone he added,—

“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.”

Dionysia shuddered. She cried,—

“What will become of us?”

This time M. de Boiscoran heard her, and was ashamed of his weakness. But, before he could master his feelings, the young girl went on, saying,—

“But never mind. These are idle thoughts. Truth soars invincible, unchangeable, high above all the ablest calculations and the most skilful combinations. Jacques, you must tell the truth, the whole truth, without subterfuge or concealment.”

“I can do so no longer,” murmured he.

“Is it such a terrible secret?”

“It is improbable.”

Dionysia looked at him almost with fear. She did not recognize his old face, nor his eye, nor the tone of his voice. She drew nearer to him, and taking his hand between her own small white hands, she said,—

“But you can tell it to me, your friend, your”—

He trembled, and, drawing back, he said,—

“To you less than anybody else.”

And, feeling how mortifying such an answer must be, he added,—

“Your mind is too pure for such wretched intrigues. I do not want your wedding-dress to be stained by a speck of that mud into which they have thrown me.”

Was she deceived? No; but she had the courage to seem to be deceived. She went on quietly,—

“Very well, then. But the truth will have to be told sooner or later.”

“Yes, to M. Magloire.”

“Well, then, Jacques, write down at once what you mean to tell him. Here are pen and ink: I will carry it to him faithfully.”

“There are things, Dionysia, which cannot be written.”

She felt she was beaten; she understood that nothing would ever bend that iron will, and yet she said once more,—

“But if I were to beseech you, Jacques, by our past and our future, by that great and eternal love which you have sworn?”

“Do you really wish to make my prison hours a thousand times harder than they are? Do you want to deprive me of my last remnant of strength and of courage? Have you really no confidence in me any longer? Could you not believe me a few days more?”

He paused. Somebody knocked at the door; and almost at the same time Blangin the jailer called out through the wicket,—

“Time is passing. I want to be down stairs when they relieve guard. I am running a great risk. I am a father of a family.”

“Go home now, Dionysia,” said Jacques eagerly, “go home. I cannot think of your being seen here.”

Dionysia had paid dear enough to know that she was quite safe; still she did not object. She offered her brow to Jacques, who touched it with his lips; and half dead, holding on to the walls, she went back to the jailer’s little room. They had made up a bed for her, and she threw herself on it, dressed as she was, and remained there, immovable, as if she had been dead, overcome by a