The magistrate shook his head reproachfully. "With a pistol?" he said. "Think well, Bousquier, was it not a gun, perhaps? was it not a double-barreled gun?" "All right," reflected Bousquier, infuriated; "if they are bent upon a gun, it may just as well have been a gun." He nodded as if ashamed, and went on to say that, his life being thus threatened, he was obliged to remain in Bancal's chamber and aid and abet him. The dead man was wrapped in a linen cloth, bound with ropes, and placed upon the stretcher. The stretcher was constructed, in Bousquier's imagination, aided by the turnkey, with the utmost perfection. When he was about to describe the funeral train, however, the tortured man lost consciousness, and when, late in the evening, he was again conducted to the hearing--rarely did the night and the candle-light in the dreary room fail of their spectral effects--he unexpectedly denied everything, cried, screamed, and acted as if completely bereft of his senses. In order to encourage and calm him. Monsieur Jausion resorted to a measure as bold as it was simple; he said that Bach and Colard had likewise made a confession, and it was gratifying that their declarations coincided with those of Bousquier; if he comported himself sensibly now, he would soon be allowed to leave the prison. Bousquier was startled. The longer he reflected, the more profoundly was he impressed by what he had heard. His face blanched and he grew cold all over. It was as if a disordered dream were suddenly turned into a waking reality, or as if a person in a state of semi-intoxication, recounting the fictitious story of some misfortune and becoming more and more enmeshed in a web of falsehoods with every new detail, suddenly learned that everything had actually taken place as he had related. A peculiar depression took possession of him, he had a horror of the solitude of his cell, a dread of sleep.