There is a spot on the back of the head where a very light blow will bring about insensibility, and it was exactly on that spot that the bullet had struck me, taking off a little hair and skin, but otherwise doing no damage; but I could not help connecting the attempt on my life with the experiences of the night; in other words, with the woman whose guest I had been and whose secrets I had overheard. I had cherished a feeling of the utmost charity for her until that moment, but the "accident" changed all that, for I had not a doubt in my mind that it was by her order that somebody had made the attempt to assassinate me.
After a few hours' sleep I felt as well as ever, and before the time to make my call upon the princess I paid a visit to Jean Morét. I had neglected to say that the only letter he had sent away since his imprisonment was one to his mother, from whom he had received a reply addressed through one of my agents, and in explanation of his reluctance to send more, he had said: "It is better that the world should think me dead." Concerning the woman for whose sake he became a nihilist, he never spoke. But the experiences I had passed through at the home of the princess, the preceding night, made me wise concerning the identity of the woman who had influenced him. Indeed I had had it from her own lips that she had played with this man, even as she had hoodwinked the prince. What the relations between her and Morét might have been, in what manner they had been brought together in the past, and by what transformation of individuality he had dared to raise his eyes to a princess, I could not even conjecture. There was no doubt, however, that she had used him for one of the marionettes in her puppet show; and now he, poor devil, because of it, was safer in a prison cell, and no doubt happier, too, than he would have been at liberty.
I wanted the man to talk and to talk about her, and I must confess what I did not at the moment realize that my desire found its source more in personal resentment against any confidential passages that may have taken place between those two, than in my plain duty to the cause I was serving.
There are many kinds of jealousy, and each kind will find its expression through innumerable channels. If I had been charged with jealousy at that moment, I would have repudiated the suggestion with scorn and contempt; and yet I was jealous.
I had thought rather deeply upon this approaching conversation with Morét, while on my way to interview him, but I was no nearer to a determination regarding what I should say to him, when I entered the room he occupied in the prison, than I had been when the idea first occurred to me. Now when I entered the room where he was imprisoned, I said:
"Why is it, Morét, that you have never taken any further advantage of my promise that you could write and send letters?"
"There is no one with whom I care to communicate," he replied.
"Not even with the princess?" I asked the question idly, watching him from between half closed lids.
"With what princess?" he asked calmly, and without a trace of surprise or resentment in his perfectly trained countenance.
"Zara de Echeveria," I said, coldly.