Emma saw him come out of the laboratory. He entered the _château_, pale and trembling, upset the usual habits and customs, made the criss-cross roads of the labyrinth, and then, sure of impunity, began his terrible experiments. Fortunately the body-snatcher had died too soon, without reaping the reward of a robbery of which he was now the victim, since the heart-disease which had just carried off the spirit of Klotz, belonged really to the body of Lerne. In this manner is the burglar in a house punished when the roof falls in upon him. I now understand why that mask had resumed the real expression of my uncle. The soul of the German no longer inhabited it, to give it Klotz’s expression. Klotz the murderer of Lerne, and not Lerne the assassin of Klotz! I could not get over it. That is a confidence which the double person had forgotten to make to me, and vexed at having been his dupe so long, I said to myself, that, had I been living alone with him, I should probably have discovered his imposture, but that the society of people as easily deceived as Emma was, or accomplices like the assistants, whether duped themselves or trying to dupe me, had dragged me into this delusion. Ah! Aunt Lidivine, thought I, you were right to smile with your lips of chalk. Your Frédéric fell into a villainous trap five years ago, and the mind which has just quitted that form, is not his. Nothing alien any longer remains in it, except a deserted brain--a carnal globe as uninteresting as the liver. So it is your husband whom we are watching; it is the other who has just died, and paid his debt. At this idea I sobbed heart-broken, in the presence of the strange corpse, but the sardonic grin, left at the time of its flight by the evil soul like a stamp, still checked my emotions. I effaced it with the tip of my finger, forming the mouth, which was now stiff, and hardly malleable into the shape I wanted. At the moment, when I was stepping back, the better to judge of the effect, there was a gentle scratching at the door. “It’s I, Nicolas, I, Emma!” Poor simple girl! Should I tell her the truth? How would she take such a strange turn of destiny? I knew her; having been many times fooled, she would have reproached me with trying to mystify her, so I held my peace. “Take a rest,” said she, in a low tone. “Barbe will take your place.” “No, no,” said I, “let me be.” I felt I must keep this vigil by the side of my dead uncle to the end. I had accused him of too many crimes, and I felt the need of asking forgiveness of his memory, and of that of my aunt; and that is why, despite the wild fury of the storm, we conversed all night long--the dead man, the chalk drawing and myself. After Barbe had come at dawn, I went out into the cool of the morning, which soothes the skin and allays the fever of a long night of watching.