"I'm frightened! I'm frightened!" he said.
"This is madness!" cried Don Luis. "Aren't we here, the two of us? We can easily spend the night with you, if you prefer, by your bedside."
Fauville replied by shaking Perenna violently by the shoulder, and, with distorted features, stammering:
"If there were ten of you—if there were twenty of you with me, you need not think that it would spoil their schemes! They can do anything they please, do you hear, anything! They have already killed Inspector Vérot—they will kill me—and they will kill my son. Oh, the blackguards! My God, take pity on me! The awful terror of it! The pain I suffer!"
He had fallen on his knees and was striking his breast and repeating:
"O God, have pity on me! I can't die! I can't let my son die! Have pity on me, I beseech Thee!"
He sprang to his feet and led Perenna to a glass-fronted case, which he rolled back on its brass castors, revealing a small safe built into the wall.
"You will find my whole story here, written up day by day for the past three years. If anything should happen to me, revenge will be easy."
He hurriedly turned the letters of the padlock and, with a key which he took from his pocket, opened the safe.
It was three fourths empty; but on one of the shelves, between some piles of papers, was a diary bound in drab cloth, with a rubber band round it. He took the diary, and, emphasizing his words, said: