M. Chaigniste, the able and well-known Governor of the _Santé_ prison was in his working room, engaged in reading through again a report he had drawn up the night before on the general condition of his establishment; he was rubbing his hands in token of satisfaction, equally pleased with the elegance of his own composition and his skill as an administrator that had enabled him up to the present to avoid any, even the most trifling, of those “affairs” that are the _bête noire_ of persons in authority, when the warder appeared: “I’ve come, sir, to let you know I found Number 55 wounded in his cell when I went there this morning.” “Number 55! Why, that’s Juve, is it not, the ex-police-officer?” “Yes sir.” “Is it serious?” “No, sir, only a bit of a cut on the arm.” “Take him to the infirmary; I will go there myself, as soon as the doctor arrives.” At that very moment a bell tinkled in the Governor’s study; it was the house-porter ’phoning M. Chaigniste that Doctor Du Marvier was come for his daily visit. The Governor and the practitioner found Juve in the waiting room, sitting on a stool, holding his head between his hands and puzzling over his wound, which struck him as, after all, hard to account for. The doctor tapped him lightly on the shoulder. He was a little round man, with a merry face, a smile for ever on his lips, the very spirit of gaiety, a man to heal his patients by the mere sight of his beaming face! “My standing panacea,” he was in the habit of saying, “is a funny story.” Accordingly it was with a pleasantry he greeted the ex-police-officer, with whom he had already come in contact previously to his imprisonment. “Well, what’s the matter now? We’re not satisfied with the Governor’s treatment of us, eh? so we go and try to kill ourselves, is that it?” “Doctor,” Juve replied in the same vein; “I could very readily dispense with the privilege of being Monsieur Chaigniste’s guest, but all the same I can assure you I have not the smallest wish in the world to escape his hospitality by committing suicide. I am just as much surprised as anybody else at the wound in my arm. I can only account for it by the supposition that in my sleep I knocked up against a corner of my iron bedstead.” While speaking, Juve had removed his jacket and turned up his shirt sleeve. The wound was plainly visible, a clear cut an inch or a trifle over in length on the upper part of the arm pointing downwards. The trifling nature of the hurt indeed made the doctor’s whimsical suggestion seem utterly absurd—a man wanting to kill himself would set about the job in quite another fashion. But was Juve’s own hypothesis any more probable? Was it against the corner of his bed the police-officer had hurt himself while asleep? Evidently such was not the view taken by the doctor, who after a rapid examination, turned to the Governor, saying: