"From this moment, then, you kept silent no longer," cried the engraver; "and it was after this new crime that you left this infamous creature in Germany?" "If I hesitated to relate to you this horrible history, my friend," replied the prince, with a confused air, "it was because I was certain of my own weakness, or rather of the inexplicable influence that Paula maintained over me." "What! after this fresh attempt?" "Oh, if you knew what a frightful thing it is to doubt!" "But this dagger-blow?" said Pierre Raimond. "But this deep, tranquil sleep? the awaking so gentle, so peaceable?" "When she saw you wounded, what did she say?" inquired Bertha. "To depict her agony, her amazement, her anxious cares, would be impossible; with the most natural air in the world she declared that an investigation ought to take place. She also had remarked the sinister appearance of the master of the _auberge_, and, like myself, exhausted herself in vain conjecture. Frantz declared that he had seen no one pass him, and that they must have got in by a window which opened into the balcony, but that window was found closely shut. Paula's tone was so natural that my old servant, who never liked her, and had witnessed my marriage most reluctantly, never for an instant thought of accusing my wife." "But the little thin hand you seized--the smell of the peculiar perfume which your wife used!" said Pierre Raimond. "I repeat to you that my reason wandered in this labyrinth of singular contradictions. Paula, aided by Frantz, insisted on dressing my wound herself, and there was not the slightest affectation either in her manner or her language." "To commit such a crime, and display such hypocrisy, is the height of wickedness!" said the engraver. "Unquestionably; and the monstrousness of such a character excited my doubts in that of the evidence before me. To put the cope-stone on fatality, Paula, from interest, pity, or calculation, was never so affectionate, I ought almost say tender, as when bestowing all her attention upon me after this accident." "Stratagem! infernal stratagem!" cried Pierre Raimond. "It was, perhaps, remorse for her crime," said Bertha.