"Oh!" he cried eagerly. "Wilhelm is incapable of—"
He did not even finish his sentence. At that warm defence, so full of youth and manly virtue, I pressed his hand.
"When he woke," continued Prosper, "he must have been terrified and lost his head; no doubt he fled."
"Without awaking you?" I said. "Then surely your defence is easy; Wahlenfer's valise cannot have been stolen."
Suddenly he burst into tears.
"Oh, yes!" he cried, "I am innocent! I have not killed a man! I remember my dreams. I was playing at base with my schoolmates. I couldn't have cut off the head of a man while I dreamed I was running."
Then, in spite of these gleams of hope, which gave him at times some calmness, he felt a remorse which crushed him. He had, beyond all question, raised his arm to kill that man. He judged himself; and he felt that his heart was not innocent after committing that crime in his mind.
"And yet, I am good!" he cried. "Oh, my poor mother! Perhaps at this moment she is cheerfully playing boston with the neighbors in her little tapestry salon. If she knew that I had raised my hand to murder a man—oh! she would die of it! And I am in prison, accused of committing that crime! If I have not killed a man, I have certainly killed my mother!"
Saying these words he wept no longer; he was seized by that short and rapid madness known to the men of Picardy; he sprang to the wall, and if I had not caught him, he would have dashed out his brains against it.
"Wait for your trial," I said. "You are innocent, you will certainly be acquitted; think of your mother."