The Commandant started, and dropped a paper. It was a telegraphic message from the Minister of the Interior, conveying, and bidding him impart the news. He asked the prisoner:
“How did you hear this?”
And Dunoisse smiled so strangely in answer that the Commandant’s next official report contained the sentence quoted hereunder:
“No. X.—the officer confined during His Imperial Majesty’s pleasure—is undoubtedly becoming insane.”
“Zut!” said de Morny with a shrug, when Sire my Friend showed him this communication. “That is what you wanted, is it not?” He added: “You have used the man, and broken the man! When you need him again—he will not be available. Brains of such caliber as his are not often found under a Staff-officer’s cocked hat. Leave him shut up—and they will find them plastered on the wall one morning.... Heads are softer than walls; madmen always remember that!”
He shrugged again, and the shrug and the cynical inflection dismissed the subject of discussion. But not many weeks subsequently the Commandant again visited Dunoisse, and said to him abruptly:
“You are free.”
“Free!...”
Dunoisse trembled in every limb, and caught at the table to save himself from falling. So well had the instructions of Sire my Friend been carried out, that all hope of being delivered out of his bondage had abandoned him. It was almost appalling to learn that he might now ask questions. He faltered out:
“How long have I been here?” and was told: