"
"What have you done with it?"
"I have burnt it."
"This precaution leads one to suppose that you considered the letter
compromising."
"Not at all, sir; it treated entirely of private matters."
M. Daburon was sure that this letter came from Mademoiselle d'Arlange.
Should he nevertheless ask the question, and again hear pronounced the
name of Claire, which always aroused such painful emotions within him?
He ventured to do so, leaning over his papers, so that the prisoner
could not detect his emotion.
"From whom did this letter come?" he asked.
"From one whom I can not name."
"Sir," said the magistrate severely, "I will not conceal from you
that your position is greatly compromised. Do not aggravate it by this
culpable reticence. You are here to tell everything, sir."
"My own affairs, yes, not those of others."
Albert gave this last answer in a dry tone. He was giddy, flurried,
exasperated, by the prying and irritating mode of the examination, which
scarcely gave him time to breathe. The magistrate's questions fell upon
him more thickly than the blows of the blacksmith's hammer upon the
red-hot iron which he is anxious to beat into shape before it cools.
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