Without doubt he was bound by the tacit engagement contracted in opening the manuscript; but was this engagement valid in the presence of death? There was, in this solitary being assailed for a month by moral torment, such a need of escaping from the ineffectual and sterile corrosion of his thoughts by a positive volition, that he felt it a relief when he had at last decided on a part. From other journals which he anxiously consulted, he learned that the Greslon case would come before the assizes of Riom, on Friday, March 11th. On the 10th he gave Mariette the order to prepare his valise, and the same evening he took the train after posting a letter addressed to M. the Count André de Jussat, Captain of Dragoons in garrison at Lunéville. This letter, not signed, simply contained the lines: “Monsieur, Count de Jussat has in his hands a letter from his sister which contains the proof of the innocence of Robert Greslon. Will he permit an innocent man to be condemned?” The nihilistic psychologist had not been able to write the words _right_ and _duty_. But his resolution was taken. He would wait until the trial was ended, and if M. de Jussat were still silent, if Greslon were condemned, he would place the memoir in the hands of the president. “He took his ticket for Riom,” said Mlle. Trapenard to Father Carbonnet on returning from the station whither she had accompanied her master, almost in spite of himself, “but the idea of his going away off there, alone, and in this cold, when he is so comfortable here!” “Be easy, Mlle. Mariette,” said the astute porter. “We shall know all some day. But nothing will make me think that there is not an illegitimate son in it somewhere.” VI. COUNT ANDRÉ. AT the moment when the note which had been put into the box by Adrien Sixte arrived at Lunéville, Count André was himself at Riom. Chance willed that these two men should not meet, for the celebrated writer, on leaving the train, took his place at a venture in the omnibus for the Hôtel du Commerce, while the count had his apartment at the Hôtel de l’Univers. There in a parlor furnished with old furniture, hung with a faded paper, with worn curtains and a patched carpet, and on the morning of this Friday, March 11, 1887, on which the Greslon trial opened, the brother of poor Charlotte was walking up and down. Noon was about to strike from the clock of ornamented copper, which decorated the chimney-piece. Outside, the sky was covered with clouds, one of those Auvergne skies which brings the icy wind of the mountains.