Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 01.pdf/49

 32

"Why, on coming from Beauvais to Paris, than say things which might aid my defence, did you bring two table-knives in your I expressly charged myself. I longed to see valise?" the end of this affair, even if it had a most "I have already told you that I was ill. I disastrous issue for me." rose in the middle of the night. I had a thousand wild ideas. I was accustomed to "What was your object in buying this place near me a sword and loaded pistols. knife?" Not having taken these weapons on my "I had seen a dungeon at Vincennes; I journey, I used the two knives, which I put, thought that it contained prisoners, and I one under my pillow and the other on my believed that with my knife I could deliver night table." them:' "Why did you go to Vincennes on Sun "You did not buy the knife until after you day, the 10th of October?" had seen the woman dressed in red caressing "To distract myself. I was tormented, the children; and you have not, besides, in suffering; I wished to take the air." any of your previous examinations, spoken "How were you dressed?" of your desire to deliver prisoners." "I wore a blue overcoat, black stockings, "I was consumed with fever; I had no clear ideas; I did not know what I did." and shoes." "Was your overcoat buttoned?" "Was the knife concealed in your pocket?" "I believe that it was buttoned." "I think so." "At Vincennes you followed a woman "It was after seeing the children that you wearing a red dress?" bought the knife. What was your motive "I may have followed her, but it was me for striking them?" chanically. I was so agitated that I did not "I was not in my right mind when I struck know what I was doing." the children; I do not know what impelled "You followed this woman to a shop?" me to do so. I would have given my own "I do not recollect." blood rather than shed theirs; it was a fren "You saw the woman with the red dress zy which made me commit this incompre talking to a woman who was with two hensible act." children?" "You remember having struck the chil "I do not recollect. I was in a deplorable dren?" state; I did not know what I was doing. I "Yes, Monsieur." recollect nothing about it; I was tormented "Then you fled into a thicket?" continually. I do not know what I did; I "Yes, Monsieur." do not remember any circumstance." "What did you do with the knife?" "Your memory was clearer at the prelim "I buried it in the earth." inary examination?" "You appreciated, then, the enormity of the "I merely agreed then to what that lady crime you had committed, since you fled?" "The deed, which I involuntarily com stated." mitted, produced a sudden revolution in my "You bought a knife at the shop which mind, which made me comprehend what I the lady dressed in red entered?" had done." "As you fled you met a sportsman?" "Yes, Monsieur, it is possible; I do not recollect. During the preliminary examina "Yes, Monsieur." "Did you not tell the gendarme who ar tion I was cruelly affected by the deplorable condition in which I found myself, by the rested you that he was losing time and that handcuffs by which I was confined. It was he would, perhaps, let the real guilty one an entirely new situation for me. Rather escape? "