"It is too late to-night," said Monsieur Alain, looking at his little clock, "to go on with my narrative, which would take me, in any case, a long time to finish in my own words.Old Bordin, my friend, whose management of the famous Simeuse case had won him much credit in the royalist party, and who pleaded in the well-known criminal affair called that of the Chauffeurs de Mortagne, gave me, after I was installed in this house, two legal papers relating to the terrible history of Madame de la Chanterie and her daughter.I kept them because Bordin died soon after, before I had a chance to return them.
You shall read them.You will find the facts much more succinctly stated than I could state them.Those facts are so numerous that Ishould only lose myself in the details and confuse them, whereas in those papers you have them in a legal summary.To-morrow, if you come to me, I will finish telling you all that relates to Madame de la Chanterie; for you will then know the general facts so thoroughly that I can end the whole story in a few words."