"So that," I said with a sudden thrill of horror, "I am indirectly responsible for the direction of the tragedy, and should have been responsible had they used the weapon against those I love! It is terrible to think of."
Doctor Louis pressed my hand. "We have all happily been spared, Gabriel," he said. "It is only the guilty who have suffered."
We continued our search for some time, without meeting with any further evidence, and I spent the evening with Doctor Louis's family, and was deeply grateful that Providence had frustrated the villainous schemes of the wretches who had conspired against them. On this evening Lauretta and I seemed to be drawn closer to each other, and once, when I held her hand in mine for a moment or two (it was done unconsciously), and her father's eyes were upon us, I was satisfied that he did not deem it a breach of the obligation into which we had entered with respect to my love for his daughter. Indeed it was not possible that all manifestations of a love so profound and absorbing as mine should be successfully kept out of sight; it would have been contrary to nature.
I slept that night in Doctor Louis's house, and the next morning Lauretta and Lauretta's mother said that they had experienced a feeling of security because of my presence.
At noon I was on my way to the magistrate's office.
[XXII.]
My purpose was to obtain, by the magistrate's permission, an interview with the prisoner. His account of the man's sincere or pretended belief in spirits and demons had deeply interested me, and I wished to have some conversation with him respecting this particular adventure which had ended in murder. I obtained without difficulty the permission I sought. I asked if the prisoner had made any further admissions or confession, and the magistrate answered no, and that the man persisted in a sullen adherence to the tale he had invented in his own defence.
"I saw him this morning," the magistrate said, "and interrogated him with severity, to no effect. He continues to declare himself to be innocent, and reiterates his fable of the demon."
"Have you asked him," I inquired, "to give you an account of all that transpired within his knowledge from the moment he entered Nerac until the moment he was arrested?"
"No," said the magistrate, "it did not occur to me to demand of him so close a description of his movements; and I doubt whether I should have been able to drag it from him. The truth he will not tell, and his invention is not strong enough to go into minute details. He is conscious of this, conscious that I should trip him up again and again on minor points which would be fatal to him, and his cunning nature warns him not to thrust his head into the trap. He belongs to the lowest order of criminals."