"
"Yes, yes, of course," said Ganimard.
"And then," exclaimed Arsene Lupin, "I held in my hands a trump-
card: an anxious public watching and waiting for my escape. And
that is the fatal error into which you fell, you and the others, in
the course of that fascinating game pending between me and the
officers of the law wherein the stake was my liberty. And you
supposed that I was playing to the gallery; that I was intoxicated
with my success. I, Arsene Lupin, guilty of such weakness! Oh,
no! And, no longer ago than the Cahorn affair, you said: "When
Arsene Lupin cries from the housetops that he will escape, he has
some object in view." But, sapristi, you must understand that in
order to escape I must create, in advance, a public belief in that
escape, a belief amounting to an article of faith, an absolute
conviction, a reality as glittering as the sun. And I did create
that belief that Arsene Lupin would escape, that Arsene Lupin would
not be present at his trial. And when you gave your evidence and
said: "That man is not Arsene Lupin," everybody was prepared to
believe you. Had one person doubted it, had any one uttered this
simple restriction: Suppose it is Arsene Lupin?--from that moment, I
was lost.
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