CHAPTER III.
THE CRIME OF THE LEARNED PROFESSOR MEISER.
"Ladies," said Leon, "Professor Meiser was no vulgar malefactor, but a man devoted to science and humanity.

If he killed the French colonel who at this moment reposes beneath my coat tails, it was for the sake of saving his life, as well as of throwing light on a question of the deepest interest, even to each one of you.
"The duration of our existence is very much too brief.

That is a fact which no man can contradict.

We know that in a hundred years, not one of the nine or ten persons assembled in this house will be living on the face of the earth.

Is not this a deplorable fact ?" Mlle.