At these words, I myself, who had seen and touched “the map of Australia,” was unable to repress a shudder as I looked pityingly at Robert Darzac, just as one might look at some poor man who is on the point of becoming the victim of some hideous judicial error. And all the others, seated around me, shuddered as well, whether for him or on account of him, for the arguments of Rouletabille were becoming so terribly _possible_ that each of us was asking himself how, after having so completely established the possibility of guilt, the young reporter could prove Darzac’s innocence. As to Robert Darzac, after having at first evinced the deepest agitation, he had grown quite tranquil and calm, as he listened attentively to every word that escaped the young man’s lips. And it seemed to me that his eyes held the same expression of astonishment, amazed and frightened, and yet full of breathless interest, which I had seen in the eyes of accused men at the bar of the Assizes when they had heard the Procurer General deliver one of his wonderful disquisitions which almost convinced the prisoners themselves that they were guilty of a crime which sometimes they had never committed. “But since you no longer have these suspicions, monsieur!” he exclaimed, his intonation singularly calm, in spite of the fact that his voice was raised, “I should be glad to know, after all this exercise of your talent of reasoning, what could have driven them away?” “In order to have them driven away, monsieur, one thing was essential--an _absolute certitude_! And I found it--a simple but conclusive proof which showed me in a manner complete and undeniable which of the two manifestations of Darzac was in reality Larsan. That proof, monsieur, was, happily, furnished me by yourself at the very moment when you _closed the circle_--the circle in which there had been found the ‘body too many.’!--the time when, after having sworn that which was the truth--that you had drawn the bolt of your apartment as soon as you had entered your sleeping room, _you had lied to us in concealing from us that you had entered that room at six o’clock instead of at five o’clock as Pere Bernier said and as we ourselves could have proved. You were then the only person except myself who knew that the Darzac who had entered at five o’clock and of whom we had spoken to you as yourself was in reality another man. But you said nothing. And you need not pretend that you did not attach any importance to that hour of five o’clock, since it explained everything to you--since it told you that another Darzac than yourself--the true Robert Darzac--had come into the Square Tower at that time. And, after your false expressions of astonishment, how quiet you kept! Your very silence lied to us! And what interest could the true Darzac have in concealing that another Darzac, who might be Larsan, had come in before you had, and was hiding in the Square Tower? Larsan alone_ was the