  It is proved that the fermionic topological charge of SU(N) lattice gauge
fields on the 4-torus, given in terms of a spectral flow of the Hermitian
Wilson--Dirac operator, or equivalently, as the index of the Overlap Dirac
operator, reduces to the continuum topological charge in the classical
continuum limit when the parameter $m_0$ is in the physical region $0<m_0<2$.
