sincere and stupendous did his remorse appear--remorse which sometimes impelled him to fast for a week at a stretch, and to wear hair-cloths, studded with small sharp nails, next to his skin. It was indeed on this account that he had been always well noted by his superiors, who recognised that he possessed the genuine religious spirit--the spirit which, when his monkish vices ran riot, atoned for them with the avenging flagellation of penitence. Now, on the revival of the Simon case, Brother Gorgias made the mistake of saying too much in the course of his first confidential chats with the writers of _Le Petit Beaumontais_. No doubt his superiors had not yet expressly imposed their own version on him, and he was too intelligent to be blind to its exceeding absurdity. As another copy of the writing slip, one bearing his paraph, had been discovered, it must have seemed to him ridiculous to deny that this paraph was his writing. All the experts in the world would never prevent full light from being thrown on that point. Thus he gave some inkling of a version of his own, one which was more reasonable than that of his superiors, and in which a part of the truth appeared. For instance, he allowed it to be supposed that he had indeed halted for a moment outside Zéphirin's open window on the night of the crime, that he had engaged in a friendly chat with the little hunchback, and that he had scolded him on seeing on his table a copy-slip which he had taken from the school without permission. Next, however, had come falsehood. He, Gorgias, had gone off, the child had closed his window, then Simon must have come and have committed the horrid crime, Satan suddenly inspiring him to make use of the copy-slip, after which he had opened the window afresh, in order to let it appear that the murderer had fled that way. But, although this version of the affair was at the first moment given by the newspaper, which declared that it emanated from a most reliable source, it was on the morrow contradicted energetically, even by Brother Gorgias himself, who repaired expressly to the newspaper office to enter his protest. He then swore on the gospel that he had gone straight home on the evening of the crime, and that the initialling on the copy-slip was a forgery in Simon's handwriting, even as the experts had demonstrated. As a matter of fact he was compelled to accept the concoction of his superiors in order that he might be backed up and saved by them. He grumbled over it, and shrugged his shoulders impatiently, for it seemed to him an extremely stupid version; but at the same time he bowed to the decision of the others, even though he foresaw that their system of defence must eventually crumble to pieces.