Page:Gaston Leroux--The man with the black feather.djvu/202

180 like a wretched thief!… It's pouring with rain.'"

M. Adolphe Lecamus declares that he has given us the exact words which came from the lips of Theophrastus in his hypnotic sleep, but that he has not been able to give us the modulation of these phrases, their strange tones, their sudden stops, their hurried starts, and their often dolorous endings. He makes no attempt to describe the physiognomy of Theophrastus. At times it expressed anger, at times scorn, sometimes extravagant daring, sometimes terror. Sometimes, he declares, at certain moving moments, Theophrastus was exactly like the portrait of Cartouche.

M. de la Nox was desirous of bringing Cartouche to the hour of his death by slow degrees. He feared the shock of making him abruptly live it over again. Therefore he had taken him back to the First of April, 1721.

The minutes which followed were exceedingly painful for us, as the wretched Cartouche once more went through the agony of those last months amid the perpetual treachery