Mathieu, for his part, had immediately recognized Alexandre, and if, pale
and terrified, he kept silent on the subject, it was because he desired
to take nobody, not even his son, into his confidence, given the fresh
suppositions, the frightful suppositions, which now arose in his mind
from out of all the darkness. He listened with growing anxiety to the
enumeration of the few points which were certain: the extinguishing of
the electric lights in the gallery and the opening of the balustrade
door, which was always kept closed and could only have been opened by
some habitue, since, to turn the handle, one had to press a secret spring
which kept it from moving. And, all at once, as Victor Moineaud pointed
out that the old man had certainly been the first to fall, since one of
the young man's legs had been stretched across his stomach, Mathieu was
carried fourteen years backward. He remembered old Moineaud picking up
Blaise on the very spot where Victor, the son, had just picked up Morange
and Alexandre. Blaise! At the thought of his dead boy fresh light came to
Mathieu, a frightful suspicion blazed up amid the terrible obscurity in
which he had been groping and doubting.
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