Later on, when I had passed the proper age for
the conscription, a lawyer told me that I should get into all kinds of
trouble if I sought a place on the civil register so late in the day;
and so I decided to exist surreptitiously. And this is why I have no
Christian name, and why I can't exactly say where I was born."
If truth has any particular accent of its own, as moralists have
asserted, the murderer had found that accent. Voice, gesture, glance,
expression, all were in accord; not a word of his long story had rung
false.
"Now," said M. Segmuller, coldly, "what are your means of subsistence?"
By the prisoner's discomfited mien one might have supposed that he
had expected to see the prison doors fly open at the conclusion of his
narrative. "I have a profession," he replied plaintively. "The one that
Mother Tringlot taught me. I subsist by its practise; and I have lived
by it in France and other countries."
The magistrate thought he had found a flaw in the prisoner's armor. "You
say you have lived in foreign countries?" he inquired.
"Yes; during the seventeen years that I was with M. Simpson's company, I
traveled most of the time in England and Germany."
"Then you are a gymnast and an athlete. How is it that your hands are so
white and soft?"
Far from being embarrassed, the prisoner raised his hands from his
lap and examined them with evident complacency. "It is true they are
pretty," said he, "but this is because I take good care of them and
scarcely use them.
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