The moon was shining full on his face. He believed himself to be alone in the night and certainly it was one of the moments in which he would cast aside the mask of the day. First the black glasses had ceased to shade his eyes. And if his figure, during the hours of disguise, was more bent than nature had made it, if his shoulders were rounded by pretense instead of study, this was the moment when the magnificent body of Larsan, away from all observers, must relax itself. Would it relax now? I hid in the ditch behind the barberry hedge. Not one of his movements escaped me. Now he was standing erect upon the western boulevard which looked like a pedestal beneath his feet; the rays of the moon enveloped him with a cold and mournful light. Is it you, Darzac? or your spectre? or the ghost of Larsan, come back from the house of the dead? I felt that I had gone mad. What a piteous state was ours--all of us madmen! We saw Larsan everywhere, and, perhaps, Darzac himself might more than once have gazed at me, Sainclair, saying to himself: “Suppose that he were Larsan!” More than--once! I speak as though it were years since we had been locked up in the château and it was now just four days. We came here on the eighth of April in the evening. It is true that my heart had never beaten so wildly when I had asked myself the same terrible question about the others; perhaps, because it was less terrible when there was question of any of the others. And then, how strange that such a thought should have come to me! Instead of my spirit recoiling in affright before the black abyss of such an incredible hypothesis, it was, on the contrary, attracted, enchained, horribly bewitched by it. It was as though struck with vertigo which it could do nothing to evade. It glued my eyes to that figure standing upon the western boulevard, making me find the attitudes, the gestures, a strong resemblance from the rear--and then, the profile--and even the face. Yes, all--all. He did look like Larsan. Yes, but just as strongly did the face and figure resemble Darzac. How was it that this idea had come to me that night for the first time? Now that I thought of it--it should have been our first hypothesis of all. Was it not true that, at the time of “The Mystery of the Yellow Room,” the silhouette of Larsan had been confounded at the moment of the crime with that of Darzac? Was it not true that the man who was believed to be Darzac, who had come to inquire for Mlle. Stangerson’s answer at Post Office Box No. 40, had really been Larsan himself? Was it not true that this emperor of disguises had already undertaken with success to appear to be Darzac?--and to such good purpose that Mlle. Stangerson’s fiancé had been accused of being the perpetrator of the crimes committed by the other?