“What!” he cried, “you don’t see the connection? Why, don’t you know that chloral is not only a poison, but also a soporific? Juve would seem to have taken a soporific? But why? With what object? Not only does this not throw light on the mystery, but it makes it still more obscure ... Monsieur Chaigniste, are you sure your staff are to be trusted?” The Governor threw up his head like a man deeply offended, and replied in a grave voice: “I can answer for them as surely as I can for myself. I have carefully studied the characters of all my warders, and I can assure you there is not a single one of them on whom the fullest and most implicit reliance may not be placed.” “And since Juve’s incarceration there have been no changes? Which is the warder specially in charge of him?” “A man called Hervé, a man employed here ten years or more, and of whose conduct I have never had any but excellent reports.” “Then, sir, I have one favour left to ask you, to be authorized to visit the prisoner in his cell; after that I need only thank you for the information you have been so good as to give me this morning.” * * * * * The Governor was hardly out of the Infirmary before Juve’s wound was summarily attended to, and he was then handed over to the warders’ tender mercies. Not without the accompaniment of some hearty cuffs, the strait-waistcoat was put on and the prisoner was taken back to his cell. Juve made no protest, the same state of weakness and prostration still continued and reduced him to a condition of unresisting and silent passivity. It was only by degrees that he recovered his self-composure and could look the new situation in which he found himself in the face. His first impulse was to give way to the utter abandonment of despair. Alas! even in prison he was not secure from his adversary’s machinations! He had thought that, after thus depriving him of all power to act, Fantômas would be satisfied with the freedom so secured him to pursue at his ease the series of his crimes, and would forget the existence of his foe. But lo! he now found himself once more the prey of his savage adversary! For Juve felt no doubt the wound in his arm, the distress that tormented his whole body, were Fantômas’ work. Fantômas had accomplices inside the prison, and it was these confederates who had come at night to make a cut on his arm as if he had been wounded, after first sending him to sleep by means of the drug the debilitating effects of which he still experienced. With what object had they so acted? He did not know and he could not guess, ponder the matter as he might. But at least the fact was certain, undeniable, and it put the crown on his calamity! Fantômas had accomplices in his prison! The thought never ceased tormenting the unhappy man with ever increasing intensity, when suddenly a new idea struck him that made him spring up joyfully from his chair and stride up and down his narrow cell.