“You know your father’s handwriting, don’t you, captain?” he said. “You must have kept letters from him, since the time when you were at school in England. Well, read the letters which he wrote to me. You will see your name repeated a hundred times, the name of his son; and you will see the name of the Coralie whom he meant you to marry. Your whole life—your studies, your journeys, your work—is described in these letters. And you will also find your photographs, which he had taken by various correspondents, and photographs of Coralie, whom he had visited at Salonica. And you will see above all his hatred for Essarès Bey, whose secretary he had become, and his plans of revenge, his patience, his tenacity. And you will also see his despair when he heard of the marriage between Essarès and Coralie and, immediately afterwards, his joy at the thought that his revenge would be more cruel when he succeeded in uniting his son Patrice with Essarès’ wife.”
As the old fellow spoke, he placed the letters one by one under the eyes of Patrice, who had at once recognized his father’s hand and sat greedily devouring sentences in which his own name was constantly repeated. M. Vacherot watched him.
“Have you any more doubts, captain?” he asked, at last.
The officer again pressed his clenched fists to his temples:
“I saw his face,” he said, “above the skylight, in the lodge into which he had locked us. . . . It was gloating over our death, it was a face mad with hatred. . . . He hated us even more than Essarès did. . . .”
“A mistake! Pure imagination!” the old man protested.
“Or madness,” muttered Patrice.
Then he struck the table violently, in a fit of revulsion:
“It’s not true, it’s not true!” he exclaimed. “That man is not my father. What, a scoundrel like that! . . .”
He took a few steps round the little room and, stopping in front of Don Luis, jerked out: