My suspicions of Brignolles were, doubtless, ridiculous, and no more accidents happened. All the same, I was so strongly prejudiced against the young man that, at the bottom of my heart, I blamed him for the slow improvement in M. Darzac’s physical condition. At the beginning of the winter Darzac had such a bad cough that I entreated him to ask for leave of absence and to take a trip to the Midi--a prayer in which all his friends joined. The physicians advised San Remo. He went thither, and a week later he wrote us that he felt much better--that it seemed to him as though a heavy weight had been lifted from his breast. “I can breathe here,” he wrote. “When I left Paris, I seemed to be stifling.” This letter from M. Darzac gave me much food for thought, and I no longer hesitated to take Rouletabille into my confidence. He agreed with me that it was a most peculiar coincidence that M. Darzac was so ill when Brignolles was with him and so much better when he and his young assistant were separated. The impression that this was actually the fact was so strong in my mind that I would on no account have permitted myself to lose sight of Brignolles. No, indeed. I verily believe that if he had attempted to leave Paris, I should have followed him. But he made no such attempt. On the contrary, he haunted the footsteps of M. Stangerson. Under the pretext of asking news of M. Darzac, he presented himself at the house of the Professor almost every day. Once he made an effort to see Mlle. Stangerson, but I had painted his portrait to M. Darzac’s fiancée in such unflattering terms, that I had succeeded in disgusting her with him completely--a fact on which I congratulated myself in my innermost soul. M. Darzac remained four months at San Remo, and returned home at the end of that time almost completely restored to health. His eyes, however, were still weak, and he was under the necessity of taking the greatest care of them. Rouletabille and myself had resolved to keep a close watch on Brignolles, but we were satisfied that everything would be right when we were informed that the long-deferred marriage was to occur almost immediately and that M. Darzac would take his wife away on a long honeymoon trip far from Paris--and from Brignolles. Upon his return from San Remo, M. Darzac had asked me: “Well, how are you getting on with poor Brignolles? Have you decided that you were wrong about him?” “Indeed, I have not,” was my response. And Darzac turned away, laughing at me, and uttering one of the Provencal jests which he affected when circumstances allowed him to be gay, and which found on his lips a new freshness since his visit to the Midi had accustomed him again to the accents of his childhood.