“What relations do you think could there be between a poor devil like
myself and a great personage like him? Would he have condescended even
to look at me? Would I have dared to speak to him? If I know him, it is
only because I have seen him, from afar off, walk the quarter-deck with
the other officers, a cigar in his mouth, after a good meal, while we
in the forecastle had our salt fish, and broke our teeth with worm-eaten
hard-tack.”
“So you had no reason to hate him?”
“None; as little as anybody else.”
Seated upon a wretched little footstool, his paper on his knees, an
inkhorn in his hand, the clerk was rapidly taking down the questions and
the answers. The magistrate made him a sign that it was ended, and then
said, turning to the murderer,--
“That is enough for to-day. I am bound to tell you, that, having so far
only kept you as a matter of precaution, I shall issue now an order for
your arrest.”
“You mean I am to be put in jail?”
“Yes, until the court shall decide whether you are _guilty_ of murder,
or of involuntary homicide.”
Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet, seemed to have foreseen this conclusion: at
least he coolly shrugged his shoulders, and said in a hoarse voice,--
“In that case I shall have my linen changed pretty often here; for, if I
had been wicked enough to plot an assassination, I should not have been
fool enough to say so.”
“Who knows?” replied the magistrate. “Some evidence is as good as an
avowal.”