Jacques still wished to speak of that last confidence of the dying man, but she said again: "Adieu!" With her hand, gloved in black, she made the sign of the Cross, smiled sadly as she looked at the tomb where the chrysanthemums lay, then lowering her veil she went away, and Dantin, standing near the gray tomb, saw her disappear at the end of an alley. The martyr, expiating near the old crippled man, a fault of which she was innocent, went back to him who was without suspicion; to him who adored her and to whom she was, in their poor apartment in Blois, his saint and his daughter. She would watch, she would lose her youth, near that old soldier whose robust constitution would endure many, many long years. She would pay her dead mother's debt; she would pay it by devoting every hour of her life to this man whose name she bore--an illustrious name, a name belonging to the victories, to the struggles, to the history of yesterday--she would be the hostage, the expiatory victim. With all her life would she redeem the fault of that other! "And who knows, my poor Rovère," said Jacques Dantin, "thy daughter, proud of her sacrifice, is perhaps happier in doing this!" In his turn he left the tomb, he went out of the cemetery, he wished to walk to his lodging in the Rue Richelieu. He had only taken a few steps along the Boulevard, where--it seemed but yesterday--he had followed (talking with Bernardet) behind Rovère's funeral carriage, when he nearly ran into a little man who was hurrying along the pavement. The police officer saluted him, with a shaking of the head, which had in it regret, a little confusion, some excuses. "Ah! Monsieur Dantin, what a grudge you must have against me!" "Not at all," said Dantin. "You thought that you were doing your duty, and it did not displease me to have you try to so quickly avenge my poor Rovère." "Avenge him! Yes, he will be! I would not give four sous for Charles Pradès's head to-morrow, when he is tried. We shall see each other in court. _Au revoir_, Monsieur Dantin, and all my excuses!" "_Au revoir_, Monsieur Bernardet, and all my compliments!" The two men separated. Bernardet was on his way home to breakfast. He was late. Mme. Bernardet would be waiting, and a little red and breathless he hurried along. He stopped on hearing a newsboy announce the last number of _Lutèce_. "Ask for the account of the trial to-morrow: The inquest by Paul Rodier on the crime of the Boulevard de Clichy!" The newsboy saluted Bernardet whom he knew very well. "Give me a paper!" said the police officer. The boy pulled out a paper from the package he was carrying, and waved it over his head like a flag. "Ah! I understand, that interests you, Monsieur Bernardet!" And while the little man looked for the heading _Lutèce_ in capital letters--the title which Paul Rodier had given to a series of interviews with celebrated physicians, the newsboy, giving Bernardet his change, said: