Add to that two
months of dieting in cell 24; exercises repeated a thousand times
to enable me to hold my features in a certain grimace, to carry my
head at a certain inclination, and adapt my back and shoulders to a
stooping posture. Then five drops of atropine in the eyes to make
them haggard and wild, and the trick is done."
"I do not understand how you deceived the guards."
"The change was progressive. The evolution was so gradual that
they failed to notice it."
"But Baudru Desire?"
"Baudru exists. He is a poor, harmless fellow whom I met last
year; and, really, he bears a certain resemblance to me.
Considering my arrest as a possible event, I took charge of Baudru
and studied the points wherein we differed in appearance with a
view to correct them in my own person. My friends caused him to
remain at the Depot overnight, and to leave there next day about
the same hour as I did--a coincidence easily arranged. Of course,
it was necessary to have a record of his detention at the Depot in
order to establish the fact that such a person was a reality;
otherwise, the police would have sought elsewhere to find out my
identity. But, in offering to them this excellent Baudru, it was
inevitable, you understand, inevitable that they would seize
upon him, and, despite the insurmountable difficulties of a
substitution, they would prefer to believe in a substitution than
confess their ignorance.
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