“I suspect no one; death raps at your door—it enters—it goes, not blindfolded, but circumspectly, from room to room. Well, I follow its course, I track its passage; I adopt the wisdom of the ancients, and feel my way, for my friendship for your family and my respect for you are as a twofold bandage over my eyes; well——”
“Oh, speak, speak, doctor; I shall have courage.”
“Well, sir, you have in your establishment, or in your family, perhaps, one of the frightful monstrosities of which each century produces only one. Locusta and Agrippina, living at the same time, were an exception, and proved the determination of Providence to effect the entire ruin of the Roman empire, sullied by so many crimes. Brunhilda and Fredegund were the results of the painful struggle of civilization in its infancy, when man was learning to control mind, were it even by an emissary from the realms of darkness. All these women had been, or were, beautiful. The same flower of innocence had flourished, or was still flourishing, on their brow, that is seen on the brow of the culprit in your house.”
Villefort shrieked, clasped his hands, and looked at the doctor with a supplicating air. But the latter went on without pity:
“‘Seek whom the crime will profit,’ says an axiom of jurisprudence.”
“Doctor,” cried Villefort, “alas, doctor, how often has man’s justice been deceived by those fatal words. I know not why, but I feel that this crime——”
“You acknowledge, then, the existence of the crime?”