"Prove to me that it is absurd in truth. Do you not wish to reply?"
"I have told you all I know."
"But you have said nothing of what I have demanded of you."
"It is not my secret."
"Yes; there is your system. It is frequent, it is common. It is that of all the accused."
"Am I already accused?" asked Dantin, ironically.
M. Ginory was silent a moment, then, slowly taking from the drawer of his desk some paper upon which Dantin could discern no writing this time, but some figures, engraved in black—he knew not what they were—the Magistrate held them between his fingers so as to show them. He swung them to and fro, and the papers rustled like dry leaves. He seemed to attach great value to these papers, which the registrar looked at from a corner of his eye, guessing that they were the photographic proofs which had been taken.
"I beg of you to examine these proofs," said the Magistrate to Dantin. He held them out to him, and Dantin spread them on the table (there were four of them), then he put on his eyeglasses in order to see better. "What is that?" he asked.
"Look carefully," replied the Magistrate. Dantin bent over the proofs, examined them one by one, divined, rather than saw, in the picture which was a little hazy, the portrait of a man; and upon close examination began to see in the spectre a vague resemblance.
"Do you not see that this picture bears a resemblance to you?"