"It belonged to M. Rovère," the magistrate replied, "M. Rovère, the murdered man; M. Rovère, who was consul at Buenos Ayres, and you spoke, yesterday, of Buenos Ayres, in the examination at the station house in the Rue de la Rochefoucauld." "M. Rovère? Buenos Ayres?" repeated the young man, rolling his sombrero around his fingers. He repeated that he did not know the ex-Consul, that he had never been in South America, that he had come from Sydney. Bernardet, at this moment, interrupted him by taking his hat from him without saying a word, and Pradès cast a very angry look at the little man. M. Ginory understood Bernardet's move and approved with a smile. He looked in the inside of the sombrero which Bernardet handed to him. The hat bore the address of Gordon, Smithson & Co., Berner Street, London. "But, after all," thought the Magistrate, "Buenos Ayres is one of the markets for English goods." "That is a hat bought at Sydney," Pradès (who had understood) explained. Before the bold, decided, almost violent affirmations which Mme. Colard made that this was certainly the seller of the portrait, the young man lost countenance a little. He kept saying over and over: "You deceive yourself. Madame, I have never spoken to you, I have never seen you." When M. Ginory asked her if she still persisted in saying that this was the man who had sold her the picture, she said: "Do I still persist? With my neck under the guillotine I would persist," and she kept repeating: "I am sure of it! I am sure of it!" This preliminary examination brought about no decisive result. It was certain that, if this portrait had been in the possession of this young man and been sold by him, that he, Charles Pradès, was an accomplice of Dantin's, if not the author of the crime. They ought, then, to be brought face to face, and, possibly, this might bring about an immediate result. And why not have this meeting take place at once, before Pradès was sent where Dantin was, at Mazas? M. Ginory, who had uttered this word "Mazas," noticed the expression of terror which flashed across and suddenly transfigured the young man's face. Pradès stammered: "Then--you will hold me? Then--I am not free?" M. Ginory did not reply. He gave an order that this Pradès should be guarded until the arrival of Dantin from Mazas. In Mazas, in that walled prison, in the cell which had already made him ill, Jacques Dantin sat. This man, with the trooper's air, seemed almost to be in a state of collapse. When the guard came to his cell he drew himself up and endeavored to collect all his energy; and when the door was opened and he was called he appeared quite like himself. When he saw the prison wagon which had brought him to Mazas and now awaited to take him to the Palais de Justice he instinctively recoiled; then, recovering himself, he entered the narrow vehicle.