"I did not murder him," was the strange reply, "and you know it."
"Fool!" I exclaimed. "You are playing the same trick upon me that you played upon your judge. It was unsuccessful with him; it will be as unsuccessful with me. Answer me. What further danger can threaten you than the danger, the certain, positive danger, in which you now stand? You are doomed, Pierre."
"My body is, perhaps," he muttered, "but not my soul."
"Oh," I said, in a tone of contempt, "you believe in a soul."
"I? Yes. With reason, with intelligence. Not out of my fears, but out of my hopes."
"I have no hopes and no fears," he said. "I have done wrong, but not the wrong with which I am charged."
His response to this was to hide his head closer on his breast, to make an even stronger endeavour to avoid my glance.
"When I next command you," I said, "you will obey. About your soul? Believing that you possess one, what worse peril can threaten it than the pass to which you have brought it by your crime."
And still he doggedly repeated, "I have committed no crime."
"Because you are here to tempt me, to ensnare me. I will not look at you."
I strode to his side, and with my strong hand on his shoulder, forced him to raise his head, forced him to look me straight in the face. His eyes wavered for a few moments, shifted as though they would escape my compelling power, and finally became fixed on mine. He had no power to resist me. The will in me was strong, and produced its effects on the weaker mind. Gradually what brilliancy there was in his eyes became dimmed, and drew but a reflected, shadowy light from mine. Thus we remained face to face for four or five minutes, and then I spoke.
"Relate to me," I said, "all that you know from the time you and the man who is dead conceived the idea of coming to Nerac up to the present moment. Conceal nothing. The truth, the bare, naked truth!"