“There, comrade Bregeac. You recognize it, don’t you? It’s the bottle you stole the other day from Jodot, which I took from you and which a third person stole from me before your eyes. That third person? It was Baron Limézy and no one else. I found it in his lodgings a little while ago. What? Do you understand, darling? This is a real treasure, this bottle is. Look at it, Bregeac. Look at its label and the formula on it—of some mineral water—Eau de Jouvence. Here it is. Limézy has corked and sealed it with red sealing-wax. Look at it carefully. Do you see that little piece of rolled-up paper at the bottom of it. It’s certain that you wanted to get it from Jodot—a confession, to a dead certainty. A most compromising specimen of your handwriting. My poor Bregeac!” It was his hour of triumph. As he knocked off the sealing-wax and uncorked the bottle he threw out phrases and interjections at haphazard. “Marescal famous all the world over!... Arrest of the express murderers!... Bregeac’s past!... What surprises at the inquiry and at the assizes!... Sauvinoux, you have handcuffs for the girl?... Call Labonce and Tony.... Victory! Complete Victory!” He turned the bottle upside down. The paper fell out of it. He picked it up, unfolded it, and carried away by this whirl of windy words, like a runner whom his dash carries beyond his goal, without pausing to grasp the meaning, he read out: “Marescal is a blockhead!” CHAPTER X WORDS AS GOOD AS ACTIONS There was a stupefied silence while this incredible sentence went on ringing through the air. Marescal almost doubled up like a man who has received a blow in the stomach. Bregeac, still threatened by Sauvinoux’s revolver, appeared almost as much amazed. Suddenly a laugh rang out, a nervous laugh there was no repressing, but nevertheless struck a note of gayety in the gloomy atmosphere of the room. It was Aurelie, provoked by the immense expression of discomfiture on the face of the Commissary to this excess of truly untimely hilarity. The fact that the comic sentence had been pronounced loudly by the very man who was the object of its ridicule, brought the tears to her eyes: “Marescal is a blockhead!” Marescal gazed at her with a sudden inquietude. How did it come about that the girl had this excess of gayety in the terrible situation in which she found herself, actually panting in the grip of her enemy. “Was the situation no longer the same?” he asked himself. “In what way had it changed?” And doubtless he perceived a connection between this unexpected laugh and the strangely calm attitude of the girl since the beginning of the struggle. What then was she hoping? Was it possible that in the midst of events which should have brought her to her knees, she still stood on firm ground, the solidity of which appeared to her unshakeable.