Sir Robert Walpole said that every man has his price; this man had been richly bribed by a mysterious visitor, who had gained admission to the jail on the evening of Paul's arrest.
The rope and file had been used in order to blind the governor of the prison to the real delinquent.
At daybreak on the morning after his imprisonment Paul Lisimon found himself free in the streets of New Orleans, but utterly ignorant as to the mysterious being to whom he owed his release.
The jailer had refused to give him any information about this person.
"I know nothing of the business," the man said, "except that I am well paid for my share in it, and that I shall be a ruined man if I am found out."
Paul Lisimon was free.
He was free; but he stood alone in the world, without a friend—branded as a thief—cast off by the protector of his youth—an escaped felon!
He hurried toward the lonely and deserted quay. Despair was in his heart, and he yearned to rest beneath the still waters of the Mississippi.
"There, at least," he murmured, "I shall be at peace. Camillia now believes me innocent, and she will weep for my memory. Were I to wait the issue of a trial, which must result in shame and condemnation, she might, indeed, as the Frenchwoman insinuated, learn to despise me."
Heedless of all around him, absorbed in gloomy meditation, Paul Lisimon was some time unaware of the sound of a footfall close behind him; but as he drew nearer to the water side this footstep approached him still closer, and presently, in the faint gray light of that mysterious hour, betwixt night and morning, he beheld the long shadow of a man's figure upon the ground beside him.