I had not forgotten the clasped book that she had tried vainly to open, in Doctor Dormann's presence. Taking it myself from under the pillow, I left Mr. Keller and the doctor to say if I should give it, unopened, to Minna.
"Certainly not!" said the doctor.
"Why not?"
"Because it will tell her what she must never know. I believe that book to be a Diary. Open it, and see."
I found the spring and opened the clasps. It was a Diary.
"You judged, I suppose, from the appearance of the book?" I said.
"Not at all. I judged from my own experience, at the time when I was Medical Officer at the prison here. An educated criminal is almost invariably an inveterate egotist. We are all interesting to ourselves—but the more vile we are, the more intensely we are absorbed in ourselves. The very people who have, logically speaking, the most indisputable interest in concealing their crimes, are also the very people who, almost without exception, yield to the temptation of looking at themselves in the pages of a Diary."
"I don't doubt your experience, doctor. But your results puzzle me."
"Think a little, Mr. David, and you will not find the riddle so very hard to read. The better we are, the more unselfishly we are interested in others. The worse we are, the more inveterately our interest is concentrated on ourselves. Look at your aunt as an example of what I say. This morning there were some letters waiting for her, on the subject of those reforms in the treatment of mad people, which she is as resolute as ever to promote—in this country as well as in England. It was with the greatest difficulty that I prevailed on her not to answer those letters just yet: in other words, not to excite her brain and nervous system, after such an ordeal as she has just passed through. Do you think a wicked woman—with letters relating merely to the interests of other people waiting for her—would have stood in any need of my interference? Not she! The wicked woman would have thought only of herself, and would have been far too much interested in her own recovery to run the risk of a relapse. Open that book of Madame Fontaine's at any of the later entries. You will find the miserable woman self-betrayed in every page."
It was true! Every record of Madame Fontaine's most secret moments, presented in this narrative, was first found in her Diary.