"To Fritz the Fool, and to me, through him. He saw Gautran in your study after the trial----"
"Have I been watched?"
"The discovery was accidental. He was moved by some love-verses I read to him, and becoming sentimental, he dallied outside Dionetta's window, after the manner of foolish lovers. Then the lights of your study window attracted him, and he peeped through. When Gautran left the villa, Fritz followed him, and heard him in his terrified soliloquies proclaim his guilt. Were this to go out to the world, it would, according to its fashion, construe it in a manner which might be fatal to you. But Gautran is dead, and I can be silent, and can put a lock on Fritz's tongue--for in my soul I believe you were not aware the wretch was guilty when you defended him."
"I thank you. I believed him to be innocent."
"Why, then, my mind is easy. Friend, shake hands." He held the Advocate's hand in his thin fingers, and with something of wistfulness, said: "I would give a year of my life if I could prevail upon you to remain with us."
"You cannot prevail upon me. So much being said between us, more is necessary. The avowal of my ignorance of Gautran's guilt at the time I defended him--I learnt it after the trial, mind you--will not avail me. A written confession,--sworn upon his dying oath, exists, which accuses me of that which the world will be ready to believe. Strange to say, this is my lightest trouble. There are others of graver moment which more vitally concern me--unknown to you, unless, indeed, you possess a wizard's art of divination."
"Comrade," said Pierre Lamont, slowly and with emphasis, "there breathes not in the world a woman worth the breaking of a man's heart."
"Stop!" cried the Advocate in a voice of agony.
In silence he and Pierre Lamont gazed upon each other, and in the old lawyer's face the Advocate saw that his wife's faithlessness and his friend's treachery were known.
"Enough," he said; "there is for me no deeper shame, no deeper dishonour."