“‘If I wanted to make the mask of a man,’ thought he, ‘a mask that would deceive everybody by its resemblance to the flesh, how would I proceed?
“‘I would first have to procure a cast of his face, or execute a bust of him exactly identical with the reality. Only very slightly larger.
“‘I would then rub that face of marble with a very fine powder, and I would apply a coating of the finest caoutchouc, over that a layer of stiffening varnish.
“‘I would remove the whole, and paint the interior of the caoutchouc with the flesh tints, thus giving the true appearance of life, for the human face is painted from the inside.
“‘I would then back the thing with a thicker layer of rubber and remove the stiffening varnish from the outside.
“‘If my art did not fail me, I would now have a facsimile of my friend or my enemy’s face. Could I wear it and masquerade as him? Only on two conditions (1) that I could make the inside of the mask a perfect mould of my own face (2) that he was a man, a man of my own height and a man who wore glasses and a beard, for the joining at the eyes and at the neck would present an insuperable difficulty were I to imitate a clean-shaven man who did not wear glasses.’
“He brooded over the thing.
“One day he fell in with M. Lefarge, a rich jeweller, who was at times a frequenter of the Latin Quarter, and the whole diabolical plan of the Lefarge case was conceived in a flash.
“The plan of robbing and murdering a rich man in such a manner that the world would fancy that the rich man was the assassin, not the victim.
“He made a bust of Lefarge, from the bust he made Lefarge’s face. Lefarge wore a beard and glasses. The making of the exterior of the mask was a bagatelle; the real difficulty was the interior, which had to be a perfect adaptation to his own features, but he did it.