“Yes; but what was she doing these two hours before? Trace back.”
“Wait: she is lying on a sofa with a cut in the breast. She wakes from a sleep, and seeks round her. Taking a handkerchief she ties it to the window bars. Come down, poor woman! She weeps, she is in distress, she wrings her arms—ah! she is looking for a corner of the wall on which to dash out her brains. She springs towards the chimney-place where two lion heads in marble are embossed. On one of them she would beat out her brains when she sees a spot of blood on the lion’s eye. Blood, and yet she had not struck it?”
“It is mine,” said the mesmerist.
“Yes, yours. You cut your fingers with a dagger, the dagger with which she stabbed herself and you tried to get it away from her. Your bleeding fingers pressed the lion’s head.”
“It is true: how did she get out?”
“I see her examine the blood, reflect, and then lay her finger where yours was pressed. Oh, the lion’s head gives way—it is a spring which works: the chimney-plate opens.”
“Cursed imprudence of mine,” groaned the conspirator: “unhappy madman! I have betrayed myself through love. But she has gone out and flees?”
“The poor thing must be pardoned, she is so distressed.”
“Whither goes she, Andrea? follow, follow, I will it!”
“She stops in a room where are armor and furs: a safe is open but a casket usually kept in it is now on a table: she knows it again. She takes it.”