Pradès saw with a kind of fright, Rovère, with a superhuman tragic effort, step back, staggering like a drunken man, pull with his poor contracted hands from above the chimney piece an object which the murderer had not noticed and upon which, with an ardent, prayerful expression he fixed his eyes, stammering some quick inarticulate words which Pradès could not hear or understand. It seemed to Pradès that between his victim and himself there was a witness, and whether he thought of the value of the stones imbedded in the frame or whether he wished to take from Rovère this last support in his distress, he went to him and attempted to tear the portrait from his hands. But an extraordinary strength seemed to come to the dying man and Rovère resisted, fastening his eyes upon the portrait, casting upon it a living flame, like the last flare of a dying lamp, and with this last, despairing, agonizing look the ex-Consul breathed his last. He fell. Pradès tore the portrait from the fingers which clutched it. That frame, he could sell it. He picked up here and there some pieces which seemed to him of value, as if on a pillaging tour on the prairies. He was about to enter the library where the safe was, when the noise of the opening of the entrance door awakened his trapper's instinct. Some one was coming. Who it could be was of little importance. To remain was to expose himself, to be at once arrested. The corpse once seen, the person would cry aloud, rush out, close the door and send for the police. Hesitating between a desire to pillage and the necessity for fright, Pradès did not wait long to decide. Should he hide? Impossible! Then, stepping back to the salon door, he flattened himself as much as possible against the wall and waited until the door should be opened when he would be completely hidden behind it. As Mme. Moniche stepped into the room and cried out as she saw Rovère lying on the floor, Pradès slipped into the ante-chamber, found himself on the landing, closed the door, rapidly descended the stairs and stepped out upon the Boulevard de Clichy among the passers-by, even before Mme. Moniche, terrified, had called for help. CHAPTER XVII. ALL the details of that murder, M. Ginory had drawn, one by one, from Pradès in his examination. The murderer denied at first; hesitated; discussed; then at last, like a cask with the bung out, from which pours not wine, but blood, the prisoner told all; confessed; recounted; loosened his tongue; abandoned himself weakened and conquered, weary of his misery. "I was so foolish, so stupid," he violently said, "as to keep the portrait. I believed that the frame was worth a fortune. Fool! I sold it for a hundred sous!" He gave the merchant's address, it was on the Quai Saint Michel. Bernardet found the frame as he had found the painted panel, and this time, no great credit was due him.