"Was in bed in a room which led out of the room in which Frantz was watching—he did not sleep—had a light, and it was impossible to enter our apartment without being seen."
"It must then have been so—this time—it must have been she!" said Bertha. "Mon Dieu! is such a crime possible?"
"The dissimulation astonishes me more than the crime," said Pierre Raimond.
"A last proof left me without any doubt," added Arnold; "on the floor at the feet of my wife, I saw a Florentine dagger—a valuable weapon chiselled by Benvenuto Cellini, which had been, I believe, left to Paula by her father."
"From this moment, then, you kept silent no longer," cried the engraver; "and it was after this new crime that you left this infamous creature in Germany?"
"If I hesitated to relate to you this horrible history, my friend," replied the prince, with a confused air, "it was because I was certain of my own weakness, or rather of the inexplicable influence that Paula maintained over me."
"What! after this fresh attempt?"
"Oh, if you knew what a frightful thing it is to doubt!"
"But this dagger-blow?" said Pierre Raimond.
"But this deep, tranquil sleep? the awaking so gentle, so peaceable?"