"You wouldn't hurt me, Patrice. You must have found some letters; and you now know the link that binds us together. Oh, how happy I should have been . . . !" Patrice had released his hold and stood staring at him in horror. Sinking his voice in his turn, he said: "Don't dare to speak of that: I won't, I won't believe it!" "It's the truth, Patrice." "You lie! You lie!" cried the officer, unable to restrain himself any longer, while his grief distorted his face out of all recognition. "Ah, I see you have guessed it! Then I need not explain . . ." "You lie! You're just a common scoundrel! . . . If what you say is true, why did you plot against Coralie and me? Why did you try to murder the two of us?" "I was mad, Patrice. Yes, I go mad at times. All these tragedies have turned my head. My own Coralie's death . . . and then my life in Essarès' shadow . . . and then . . . and then, above all, the gold! . . . Did I really try to kill you both? I no longer remember. Or at least I remember a dream I had: it happened in the lodge, didn't it, as before? Oh, madness! What a torture! I'm like a man in the galleys. I have to do things against my will! . . . Then it was in the lodge, was it, as before? And in the same manner? With the same implements? . . . Yes, in my dream, I went through all my agony over again . . . and that of my darling. . . . But, instead of being tortured, I was the torturer . . . What a torment!" He spoke low, inside himself, with hesitations and intervals and an unspeakable air of suffering. Don Luis kept his eyes fixed on him, as though trying to discover what he was aiming at. And Siméon continued: "My poor Patrice! . . . I was so fond of you! . . . And now you are my worst enemy! . . . How indeed could it be otherwise? . . . How could you forget? . . . Oh, why didn't they lock me up after Essarès' death? It was then that I felt my brain going. . . ." "So it was you who killed him?" asked Patrice. "No, no, that's just it: somebody else robbed me of my revenge." "Who?" "I don't know. . . . The whole business is incomprehensible to me. . . . Don't speak of it. . . . It all pains me. . . . I have suffered so since Coralie's death!" "Coralie!" exclaimed Patrice. "Yes, the woman I loved. . . . As for little Coralie, I've suffered also on her account. . . . She ought not to have married Essarès." "Where is she?" asked Patrice, in agony. "I can't tell you." "Oh," cried Patrice, shaking with rage, "you mean she's dead!" "No, she's alive, I swear it." "Then where is she? That's the only thing that matters. All the rest belongs to the past. But this thing, a woman's life, Coralie's life . . ." "Listen." Siméon stopped and gave a glance at Don Luis; "Tell him to go away," he said. Don Luis laughed: "Of course! Little Mother Coralie is hidden in the same place as the bags of gold. To save her means surrendering the bags of gold." "Well?" said Patrice, in an almost aggressive tone.