He had not a second of doubt; Madame Dammauville did not wish a professional visit from him. She wished to speak to him of Caffie, and, in the coming crisis, he said to himself that perhaps it was fortunate that it was so; at least he would be first to know what she had decided to do, and he could defend himself. Nothing is hopeless as long as a struggle is possible.
He rang the bell with a firm hand, and the door was opened by the maid who brought the letter. With a small lamp in her hand, she conducted him through the dining-room and the salon to Madame Dammauville’s bedroom.
At the threshold, a glance showed him that some changes had been made in the arrangement of the furniture. The small bed where he had seen Madame Dammauville was placed between the two windows, and she was lying in a large bed with canopy and curtains. Near her was a table on which were a shaded lamp, some books, a blotting-book, a teapot, and a cup; on the white quilt rested an unusually long bellrope, so that she might pull it without moving. The fire in the chimney was out, but the movable stove sent out a heat that denoted it was arranged for the night.
Saniel felt the heat, and mechanically unbuttoned his overcoat.
“If the heat is uncomfortable, will you not remove your overcoat?” Madame Dammauville said.
While he disposed of it and his hat, placing them on a chair by the fireplace, he heard Madame Dammauville say to her maid:
“Remain in the salon, and tell the cook not to go to bed.”
What did this mean? Was she afraid that he would cut her throat?
“Will you come close to my bed?” she said. “It is important that we should talk without raising our voices.”
He took a chair and seated himself at a certain distance from the bed, and in such a way that he was beyond the circle of light thrown by the lamp. Then he waited.
A moment of silence, which he found terribly long, slipped away before she spoke.
“You know,” she said at last, “how I saw, accidentally, from this place”—she pointed to one of the windows—“the face of the assassin of my unfortunate tenant, Monsieur Caffie.”
“Mademoiselle Cormier has told me,” he replied in a tone of ordinary conversation.
“Perhaps you are astonished that at such a distance I saw the face clearly enough to recognize it after five months, as if it were still before me.”
“It is extraordinary.”
“Not to those who have a memory for faces and attitudes; with me this memory has always been strongly developed. I remember the playmates of my childhood, and I see them as they were at six and ten years of age, without the slightest confusion in my mind.”
“The impressions of childhood are generally vivid and permanent.”
“This persistency does not only apply to my childish impressions. Today, I neither forget nor confound a physiognomy. Perhaps if I had had many acquaintances, and if I had seen a number of persons every day, there might be some confusion in my mind; but such is not the case. My delicate health has obliged me to lead a very quiet life, and I remember every one whom I have met. When I think of such a one, it is not of the name at first, but of the physiognomy. Each time that I have been to the Senate or to the Chamber, I did not need to ask the names of the deputies or senators who spoke; I had seen their portraits and I recognized them. If I go into these details it is because they are of great importance, as you will see.”
It was not necessary for her to point out their importance; he understood her only too well.
“In fine, I am thus,” she continued. “It is, therefore, not astonishing that the physiognomy and the attitude of the man who drew the curtains in Monsieur Caffie’s office should not leave my memory. You admit this, do you not?”
“Since you consult me, I must tell you that the operations of the memory are not so simple as people imagine. They comprise three things: the conservation of certain states, their reproduction and localization in the past, which should be reunited to constitute the perfect memory. Now this reunion does not always take place, and often the third is lacking.”
“I do not grasp your meaning very well. But what is the third thing?”
“Recognition.”
“Well, I can assure you that in this case it is not lacking!”
The action beginning in this way, it was of the utmost importance for Saniel that he should throw doubts in Madame Dammauville’s mind, and should make her think that this memory of which she felt so sure was not, perhaps, as strong or as perfect as she imagined.
“It is,” he said, “exactly this third thing that is the most delicate, the most complex of the three, since it supposes, besides the state of consciousness, some secondary states, variable in number and in degree, which, grouped around it, determine it.”
Madame Dammauville remained silent a moment, and Saniel saw that she made an effort to explain these obscure words to herself.
“I do not understand,” she said at last.
This was exactly what he wished; yet, as it would not be wise to let her believe that he desired to deceive or confuse her, he thought he might be a little more precise.
“I wish to ask,” he said, “if you are certain that in the mechanism of the vision and that of the recognition, which is a vision of the past, there is no confusion?”
She drew a long breath, evidently satisfied to get rid of these subtleties that troubled her.
“It is exactly because I admit the possibility of this confusion, at least in part, that I sent for you,” she said, “in order that you might establish it.”
Saniel appeared not to comprehend.
“I, Madame?”
“Yes. When you came herewith Monsieur Balzajette a few hours ago, you must have observed that I examined you in a way that was scarcely natural. Before the lamps were lighted, and when you turned your back to the daylight, I tried in vain to remember where I had seen you. I was certain that I found in you some points of resemblance to a physiognomy I had known, but the name attached to this physiognomy escaped me. When you returned, and I saw you more clearly by lamplight, my recollections became more exact; when I raised the lamp-shade the light struck you full in the face, and then your eyes, so characteristic, and at the same time a violent contraction of your features, made me recall the name. This physiognomy, these eyes, this face, belonged to the man whom from this place” she pointed to the window—“I saw draw Monsieur Caffies curtains.”
Saniel did not flinch.
“This is a resemblance that would be hard for me,” he said, “if your memory were faithful.”
“I tell myself that it may not be. And after the first feeling of surprise which made me cry out, I was confirmed in this thought on recalling the fact that you did not wear the long hair and blond beard that the man wore who drew the curtains; but at that moment Monsieur Balzajette spoke of the hair and beard that you had had cut. I was prostrated. However, I had the strength to ask if you had had any business with Monsieur Caffie. Do you remember your answer?”
“Perfectly.”
“After your departure I experienced a cruel anguish. It was you whom I had seen draw the curtains, and it could not be you. I tried to think what I ought to do—to inform the judge or to ask you for an interview. For a long time I wavered. At length I decided on the interview, and I wrote to you.”
“I have come at your call, but I declare that I do not know what to reply to this strange communication. You believe that you recognize in me the man who drew the curtains.”
“I recognize you.”
“Then what do you wish me to say? It is not a consultation that you ask of me?”
She believed she understood the meaning of this reply and divined its end.
“The question does not concern me,” she said, “neither my moral nor mental state, but yourself. My eyes, my memory, my conscience, bring a frightful accusation against you. I cannot believe my eyes or my memory. I challenge my conscience, and I ask you to reduce this accusation to nothing.”
“And how, Madame?”
“Oh, not by protestations!”
“How can you expect that a man in my position will lower himself to discuss accusations that rest on an hallucination?”
“Do you believe that I have hallucinations? If you do, call one of your ‘confreres’ to-morrow in consultation. If he believes as you do, I will submit; if not, I shall be convinced that I saw clearly, and I shall act accordingly.”
“If you saw clearly, Madame, and I am ready to concede this to you, it proves that there is some one somewhere who is my double.”
“I said this to myself; and it is exactly this idea that made me write to you. I wished to give you the opportunity of proving that you could not be this man.”
“You will agree that it is difficult for me to admit a discussion on such an accusation.”
“One may find one’s self accused by a concourse of fatal circumstances, and be not less innocent. Witness the unfortunate boy imprisoned for five months for a crime of which he is not guilty. And I pass from your innocence as from his, to ask you to prove that the charges against you are false.”
“There are no charges against me.”
“There may be; that depends upon yourself. Your hair and beard may have been cut at the time of the assassination; in that case it is quite certain that the man I saw was not you, and that I am the victim of an hallucination. Were they or were they not?”
“They were not; it is only a few days since I had them cut on account of a contagious disease.”
“It may be,” she continued, without appearing to be impressed by this explanation, “that the day of the assassination, at the hour when I saw you, you were occupied somewhere in such a way that you can prove you could not have been in the Rue Sainte-Anne, and that I was the victim of an hallucination. And again, it may be that at the time your position was not that of a man at the last extremity, forced to crime by misery or ambition, and that consequently you had no interest in committing the crime of a desperate man. What do I know? Twenty other means of defence may be in your hands.”
“You cited the example of this poor boy who is imprisoned, although innocent. Would it not be applicable to me if you did not recognize the error of your eyes or your memory? Would he not be condemned without your testimony? Should I not be if I do not find one that destroys your accusation? And I see no one from whom I can ask this testimony. Have you thought of the infamy with which such an accusation will cover me? If I repel it, and I shall repel it, will it not have dishonored me, ruined me forever?”
“It is just because I thought of this that I sent for you, to the end that by an explanation that you would give, it seemed to me, you would prevent me from informing the judge of this suspicion. This explanation you do not give me; I must now think only of him whose innocence is proved for me, and take his side against him whose guilt is not less proved. To-morrow I shall inform the judge.”
“You will not do that!”
“My duty compels me to; and whatever might come, I have always done my duty. For me, in this horrible affair, there is the cause of the innocent and of the guilty, and I place myself on the side of the innocent.”
“I can prove to you that it was an aberration of vision—”
“You will prove it to the judge; the law will appreciate it.”
He rose brusquely. She put her hand on the bellcord. They looked at each other for a moment, and what their lips did not express their eyes said:
“I do not fear you; my precautions are taken.”
“That bell will not save you.”
At last he spoke in a hoarse and quivering voice:
“To you the responsibility of whatever happens Madame.”
“I accept it before God,” she said, with a calm firmness. “Defend yourself.”
He went to the armchair on which he had placed his coat and hat, and bending down to take them, he noiselessly turned the draught of the stove.
At the same time Madame Dammauville pulled the bellcord; the maid opened the door of the salon.
“Show Doctor Saniel to the door.”
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