There was one remedy to be applied to this unbearable malady--that remedy which had already been successful in the case of my suspicions of my mother. I must proceed to place the realities in opposition to the suggestions of imagination. I must seek the presence of the man whom I suspected, look him straight in the face, and see him as he was, not as my fancy, growing more feverish day by day, represented him. Then I should discern whether I had or had not been the sport of a delusion; and the sooner I resorted to this test the better, for my sufferings were terribly increased by solitude. My head became confused; at last I ceased even to doubt. That which ought to have been only a faint indication, assumed to my mind the importance of an overwhelming proof. In the interest of my inquiry itself it was full time to resist this, if I were ever to pursue that inquiry farther, or else I should fall into the nervous state which I knew so well, which rendered any kind of action in cold blood impossible to me. I made up my mind to leave Compiègne, see my stepfather, and form my judgment of whether there was, or was not, anything in my suspicions, upon the first effect produced on him by my sudden and unexpected appearance before him. I founded this hope on an argument which I had already used in the case of my mother, namely, that if M. Termonde had really been concerned in the assassination of my father, he had dreaded my aunt's penetration beyond all things. Their relations had been formal, with an undercurrent of enmity on her part which had assuredly not escaped a man so astute as he. If he were guilty, would he not have feared that my aunt would have confided her thoughts to me on her death-bed? The attitude that he should assume towards me, at and after our first interview, would be a proof, complete in proportion to its suddenness, and he must have no time for preparation. I returned to Paris, therefore, without having informed even my valet of my intention, and proceeded almost immediately to my mother's hotel. I arrived there at two o'clock in the afternoon--an hour at which I was pretty sure of finding M. Termonde at home, and smoking his cigar in the hall after the second breakfast. A little later he and my mother would go their separate ways until dinner-time, which was seven o'clock. I had come on foot in order to steady my nerves by exercise, and all the way along I had been pouring contempt upon myself, for, as I drew near to the reality, the phantoms which I had summoned up in my solitude seemed like the dreams of a sick child.