my turn, Bernardet," replied M. Ginory, a little quizzically. "I have also studied the question, which seems to me a curious"——

"Have you photographed any yourself, M. Ginory?"

"No."

"Ah! There is where the proof is."

"But in 1877, the very learned Doyen of the Academy of Medicine, M. Brouardel, whose great wisdom, and whose sovereign opinion was law, one of those men who is an honor to his country, told me that when he was in Heidelberg he had heard Professor Kuhne say that he had studied this same question; he had made impressions of the retina of the eye in the following cases: After the death of a dog or a wolf, he had taken out the eye and replaced it with the back part of the eye in front; then he took a very strong light and placed it in front of the eye and between the eye and the light he placed a small grating. This grating, after an exposure of a quarter of an hour, was visible upon the retina. But those are very different experiments from the ones one hears of in America."

"They could see the bars in the grating? If that was visible, why could not the visage of the murderer be found there?"

"Eh! Other experiments have been attempted, even after those of which Professor Kuhne told our compatriot. Every one, you understand, has borne only negative results, and M. Brouardel could tell you, better than I, that in the physiological and oculistic treatises, published during the last ten years, no allusion has been made to the preservation of the image on the retina after death. It is an affair classé, Bernardet."

"Ah! Monsieur, yet"—and the police officer hesitated. Shaking his head, he again repeated: "Yet—yet!"

"You are not convinced?"

"No, Monsieur Ginory, and shall I tell you why? You, yourself, in spite of the testimony of illustrious savants, still doubt. I pray you to pardon me, but I see it in your eyes."

"That is still another way to use the retina," said Ginory, laughing. "You read one's thoughts."

"No, Monsieur, but you are a man of too great intelligence to say to yourself that there is nothing in this world classé, that every matter can be taken up again. The idea has come to me to try the experiment if I am permitted. Yes, Monsieur, those eyes, did you see them, the eyes of the dead man? They seemed to speak; they seemed to see. Their expression is of lifelike intensity. They see, I tell you, they see! They perceive something which we cannot see, and which is frightful. They bear—and no one can convince me to the contrary—they bear on the retina the reflection of the last being whom the murdered man saw before he died. They keep it still, they still retain that image. They are going to hold an autopsy; they will tell us that the throat is cut. Eh! Parbleu! We know it well. We see it for ourselves. Moniche, the porter, knows it as well as any doctor. But when one questions those eyes, when one searches in that black chamber where the image appears as on a plate, when one demands of those eyes their secret, I am convinced that one will find it."

"You are obstinate, Bernardet."

"Yes, very obstinate, Monsieur Ginory, and very patient. The pictures which I took with my kodak will give us the expression, the interior, so to speak; those which we would take of the retina would reveal to us the secret of the agony. And, moreover, unless I deceive myself, what danger attends such an experiment? One opens the poor eyes, and that is sinister, certainly, but when one holds an autopsy at the Morgue, when one enlarges the gash in the throat in order to study it, when one dissects the body, is it any more respectful or proper? Ah! Monsieur, if I but had your power"——

M. Ginory seemed quite struck with all that the police officer had said to him, but while he still held to his convictions, he did not seem quite averse to trying the experiment. Who can say to science "Halt!" and impose upon it limits which cannot be passed? No one!

"We will see, Bernardet."

And in that "we will see" there was already a half promise.

"Ah! if you only will, and what would it cost you?" added Bernardet, still urgent; indeed, almost suppliant.

"Let us finish this now. They are waiting for me," said the Examining Magistrate.

As he left M. Rovère's study, he instinctively cast a glance at the rare volumes, with their costly bindings, and he reentered the salon where M. Jacquelin des Audrays had, without doubt, finished his examination.

CHAPTER VI.

The attorney for the Republic called in the Examining Magistrate. Nothing more was to be done. The Magistrate had studied the position of the corpse, examined the wound, and now, having told M. Ginory his impressions, he did not hide from him his belief that the crime had been committed by a professional, as the stroke of the knife across the throat had been given neatly, scientifically, according to all the established rules.

"One might well take it for the work of a professional butcher."

"Yes, without doubt, M. Ginory; but one does not know. Brute force—a strong blow—can produce exactly what science can."

More agitated than he wished to appear by the strange conversation between the Agent of Sureté and himself, the Examining Magistrate stood at the foot of the corpse and gazed, with a fixity almost fierce, not at the gaping wound of which M. Jacquelin des Audrays had spoken to him, but at those eyes,—those fixed eyes, those eyes which no opacity had yet invaded, which, open, frightful, seemingly burning with anger, menacing, full of accusations of some sort and animated with vengeance, gave him a look, immovable, most powerful.

It was true! it was true! They lived! those eyes spoke. They cried to him for justice. They retained the expression of some atrocious vision: the expression of violent rage. They menaced some one—who? If the picture of some one was graven there, was it not the last image reflected on the little mirror of the retina? What if a face was reflected there! What if it was still retained in the depths of those wide-open eyes! That strange creature, Bernardet, half crazy, enthused with new ideas, with the mysteries which traverse chimerical brains, troubled him—Ginory, a man of statistics and of facts.

But truly those dead eyes seemed to appeal, to speak, to designate some one. What more eloquent, what more terrible witness could there be than the dead man himself, if it was possible for his eyes to speak; if that organ of life should contain, shut up within it, preserved, the secret of death? Bernardet, whose eyes never left the magistrate's face, ought to have been content, for it plainly expressed doubt, a hesitation, and the police officer heard him cursing under his breath.

"Folly! Stupidity! Bah! we shall see!"

Bernardet was filled with hope. M. Ginory, the Examining Magistrate, was, moreover, convinced that, for the present, and the sooner the better, the corpse should be sent to the Morgue. There, only, could a thorough and scientific examination be made. The reporter listened intently to the conversation, and Mme. Moniche clasped her hands, more and more agonized by that word Morgue, which, among the people, produces the same terror that that other word, which means, however, careful attendance, scientific treatment and safety,—hospital, does.

Nothing was now to be done except to question some of the neighbors and to take a sketch of the salon. Bernardet said to the Magistrate: "My photograph will give you that!" While some one went out to get a hearse, the Magistrates