"The idea of suicide having been immediately dropped on the simple examination of the wound, no doubt exists as to the cause of death. Rovère was assassinated. By whom? In your last interview was there any talk between you of any uneasiness which he felt in regard to anything? Was he occupied with any especial affair? Had he--sometimes one has presentiments--any presentiment of an impending evil, that he was running any danger?" "No," Dantin replied. "Rovère made no allusion to me of any peril which he feared. I have asked myself who could have any interest in his death. One might have done the deed for plunder." "That seems very probable to me," said the Magistrate, "but the examination made in the apartment proves that not a thing had been touched. Theft was not the motive." "Then?" asked Dantin. The sanguine face of the Magistrate, that robust visage, with its massive jaws, lighted up with a sort of ironical expression. "Then we are here to search for the truth and to find it." In this response, made in a mocking tone, the registrar, who knew every varying shade of tone in his Chief's voice, raised his head, for in this tone he detected a menace. "Will you tell me all that passed in that last interview?" "Nothing whatever which could in any way put justice on the track of the criminal." "But yet can you, or, rather, I should say, ought you not to relate to me all that was said or done? The slightest circumstance might enlighten us." "Rovère spoke to me of private affairs," Dantin replied, but quickly added: "They were insignificant things." "What are insignificant things?" "Remembrances--family matters." "Family things are not insignificant, above all in a case like this. Had Rovère any family? No relative assisted at the obsequies." Jacques Dantin seemed troubled, unnerved rather, and this time it was plainly visible. He replied in a short tone, which was almost brusque: "He talked of the past." "What past?" asked the Judge, quickly. "Of his youth--of moral debts." M. Ginory turned around in his chair, leaned back, and said in a caustic tone: "Truly, Monsieur, you certainly ought to complete your information and not make an enigma of your deposition. I do not understand this useless reticence, and moral debts, to use your words; they are only to gain time. What, then, was M. Rovère's past?" Dantin hesitated a moment; not very long. Then he firmly said: "That, Monsieur le Juge, is a secret confided to me by my friend, and as it has nothing to do with this matter, I ask you to refrain from questioning me about it." "I beg your pardon," the magistrate replied. "There is not, there cannot be a secret for an Examining Magistrate. In Rovère's interests, whose memory ought to have public vindication, yes, in his interests, and I ought to say also in your own, it is necessary that you should state explicitly what you have just alluded to. You tell me that there is a secret. I wish to know it."