“To my great regret, monsieur, I cannot grant what you ask. The extreme importance of the deposition which you have just made does not permit justice to rest upon the information which is our duty--a very painful duty--to ask you to state precisely.” “That is well, monsieur, I also will do my duty to the end.” There was in the accent with which the witness uttered this sentence such resolution that the murmur of the crowd gave way suddenly to silence, and the president was heard saying: “You spoke of a letter, monsieur, which your sister had written to you. Permit me to say that it is at least extraordinary that your first idea was not to enlighten justice by communicating it at once.” “It contained,” said the count, “a secret which I would have been willing to conceal at the price of my blood.” He has since told the friend who remained so true to the end of this drama, Maxime de Plane, that this was the most terrible moment of his sacrifice--but his emotion was suppressed by its very excess. He was obliged to give all the details of the letter--and recount his own sensations, and confess all his agonies. As to what followed, he has declared that he could recall only a few material details--and those the most unexpected--the coldness to his hand of an iron column against which he was leaning when he ought to have been sitting on the witness bench from which some one came to take him to his father who had fainted at the last words of his deposition. He noticed also the drawling Lorraine accent of the procureur-général who had risen to abandon the prosecution. How much time elapsed between the speeches of the procureur and of Greslon’s counsel, the retiring of the jury and its re-entrance with a negative verdict, he never knew. He has never known how he employed his evening, after the doorkeeper had invited him to leave. He remembers to have walked a great distance. Some citizens of Combronde met him on the road to this village. He went to an inn where he wrote some letters, addressed, one to his father, one to his mother and a third to his colonel, and a last to Maxime de Plane. At nine o’clock he knocked at the door of the Hôtel du Commerce, where his father had told him the mother of Greslon had gone, and he asked the _concierge_ if M. Greslon was there. This fellow had heard of the dramatic scene. He guessed from the uniform of the captain who he was, and had the good sense to reply that M. Robert Greslon had not appeared. Unfortunately he thought it right to inform the young man, who was at that moment with his mother and M. Adrien Sixte. This last could not resist the supplications of the widow who, having met him in the corridor of the hotel, had conjured him to aid her in comforting her son. “Monsieur,” said the _concierge_ to Robert after having asked permission to speak to him apart, “be careful, M. de Jussat is looking for you.” “Where is he?” asked Greslon feverishly.