"A man of that stamp is not chicken-hearted," thought Bernardet. "No! no!" Hearing those words evoked the image of the dead man, Rovère; the man was not able to master his violent emotion, and he trembled, as if under an electrical discharge. The shudder had been violent, of short duration, however, as if he had mastered his emotion by his strong will. In his involuntary movement he had displayed a tragic eloquence. Bernardet had seen in the look, in the gesture, in the movement of the man's head, something of trouble, of doubt, of terror, as in a flash of lightning in the darkness of night one sees the bottom of a pool. Bernardet smilingly said to him: "This sight is not a gay one!" "No," the man answered, and he also attempted to smile. He looked back to the stage, where the sombre play went on. "That poor Rovère!" Bernardet said. The other man now looked at Bernardet as if to read his thoughts and to learn what signification the repetition of the same name had. Bernardet sustained, with a naïve look, this mute interrogation. He allowed nothing of his thoughts to be seen in the clear, childlike depths of his eyes. He had the air of a good man, frightened by a terrible murder, and who spoke of the late victim as if he feared for himself. He waited, hoping that the man would speak. In some of Bernardet's readings he had come across the magic rule applicable to love: "Never go! Wait for the other to come!"--"_Nec ire, fac venire_"--applicable also to hate, to that duel of magnetism between the hunted man and the police spy, and Bernardet waited for the other to "come!" Brusquely, after a silence, while on the little stage the transformation was still going on, the man asked in a dry tone: "Why do you speak to me of M. Rovère?" Bernardet affably replied: "I? Because every one talks of it. It is the actuality of the moment. I live in that quarter. It was quite near there that it happened, the affair"---- "I know!" interrupted the other. The unknown had not pronounced ten words in questioning and replying, and yet Bernardet found two clues simply insignificant--terrible in reality. "I know!" was the man's reply, in a short tone, as if he wished to push aside, to thrust away, a troublesome thought. The tone, the sound of the words, had struck Bernardet. But one word especially--the word Monsieur before Rovère's name. "Monsieur Rovère? Why did he speak to me of Monsieur Rovère?" Bernardet thought. It seemed, then, that he knew the dead man. All the people gathered in this little hall, if asked in regard to this murder would have said: "Rovère!" "The Rovère affair!" "The Rovère murder!" Not one who had not known the victim would have said: "Monsieur Rovère!" The man knew him then. This simple word, in the officer's opinion, meant much.