Conscience -- Volume 3

sure which from all sides at once p

nce of the efforts that were united against him, that he asked himself if, one day, he would not be led t

tions that he must recognize that there could never more be any security for him. To-day Madame Dammauville menaced him; tomorrow it would be some one else. Who? He

be uneasy at this moment, it was the prese

rtains was not Florentin, she must have an excellent memory of the eyes; at the same time a resolute mind

would recognize him, and rec

he be b

and from what he had heard of

Caffie's wound was made by a hand skilled in killing, and this learned hand was his, more even than that of a murderer. Every one knew that

dame Dammauville and he was lost, witho

eep in an imprudent security on saying to himself that this meeting was improbable. It was improbable, also, to admit that some one was exactly opposite to Caffies window at the moment when he drew the curtains; more improbable yet to believe that this fact, insignificant in itself, that this vision, la

be fool enough to confront the danger of a recognition in the room where this paralytic was confined-at least, that

ess; they would, therefore, at a given moment, meet each other, and it was not impossible that before the

ot be able to leave her bed to go to court; but were there only

arded man that she remembered. Had he been like every one else she would not have remarked him; or, at least, she would have confounded him

beard cut; he had only to enter the first barber shop

o would be surprised at first would soon cease to think of it, without doubt; otherwise, he had an easy answer for them; on the eve of becomin

e. Had not the latter already remarked the resemblance between him and the description, a

wyer, but it would be much more dangerous coming from Phillis. Nouga

rrive at conclusions from which she would not be able to free herself. Already, five or six months before, this question of long hair and beard had been agitated between them. As he complained one day of the bourgeois who would not come to him, she gently explained to him that to please and attract these bourgeois it was, perhaps, not quite well to astonish those whom one does not shock. That overcoats less long, hats with less brim, and hair and beard shorter; in fact, a general appearance that more nearly approached their own, would be, perhaps, more agr

foreseeing, the day after Caffie's death, that circumstances might arise sooner or later which would force it upon him. At that moment it did not present the same dangers as now; but

open he saw the abyss to the edge of

against him? Instead of taking refuge in miserable makeshifts when Phillis and Nougarede asked him to see Madame Dammauville, he wou

e; the lesson that experience taught him was hard, and this was not the first one; the evening of Caffie's death he saw very clearly that a new situation opened before him, which to the end of his l

ent and the future that he must measure with a cle

d cut. However adventurous this resolution was, however embarrassing it might become in p

reflection caused him to stop; it would be certainly a mistake to provoke the gossip of this man who, knew him, and who, for the pleasure of talki

llis, and as he wished to avoid the surprise that she would not fail to show if she saw him suddenly without hair and beard, he would give this explanatio

imself and with things, to see to wha