When, at length, we had concluded our examination, and the intense
excitement of the time had in some measure subsided, Legrand, who saw
that I was dying with impatience for a solution of this most
extraordinary riddle, entered into a full detail of all the
circumstances connected with it.
"You remember," said he, "the night when I handed you the rough sketch
I had made of the _scarab?¦us_. You recollect, also, that I became
quite vexed at you for insisting that my drawing resembled a
death's-head. When you first made this assertion I thought you were
jesting; but afterwards I called to mind the peculiar spots on the
back of the insect, and admitted to myself that your remark had some
little foundation in fact. Still, the sneer at my graphic powers
irritated me--for I am considered a good artist--and, therefore, when
you handed me the scrap of parchment, I was about to crumple it up and
throw it angrily into the fire."
"The scrap of paper, you mean," said I.
"No: it had much of the appearance of paper, and at first I supposed
it to be such, but when I came to draw upon it, I discovered it, at
once, to be a piece of very thin parchment. It was quite dirty, you
remember. Well, as I was in the very act of crumpling it up, my glance
fell upon the sketch at which you had been looking, and you may
imagine my astonishment when I perceived, in, fact, the figure of a
death's-head just where, it seemed to me, I had made the drawing of
the beetle.
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