“They might cut me to pieces, and I would not be able to say what
happened after that. I was dead drunk, and do not recollect a thing any
more. From what Chevassat afterwards told me, I had to be carried to
the carriage; and he took me to a hotel in the suburb, where he hired a
lodging for me. When I woke the next day, a little before noon, my head
was as heavy as lead; and I tried to recall what had happened at the
restaurant, and if it was not perhaps merely the bad wine that had given
me the nightmare.
“Unfortunately, it was no dream; and I soon found that out, when a
waiter came up and brought me a letter. Chevassat wrote me to come
to his house, and to breakfast with him for the purpose of talking
business.
“Of course I went. I asked the concierge where M. Justin Chevassat lives
in the house; and he directs me to go to the second floor, on the right
hand. I go up, ring the bell; a servant opens the door; I enter, and
find, in an elegant apartment, my brigand in a dressing-gown, stretched
out on a sofa. On the way I had made up my mind to tell him positively
that he need not count upon me; that the thing was a horror to me; and
that I retracted all I had said. But, as soon as I began, he became
perfectly furious, calling me a coward and a traitor, and telling me
that I had no choice but to make my fortune, or to receive a blow with
the big knife between my shoulders. At the same time he spread out
before me a great heap of gold. Then, yes, then I was weak. I felt I was
caught. Chevassat frightened me; the gold intoxicated me. I pledged my
word; and the bargain was made.”
As he said this, Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet, sighed deeply and noisily,
like a man whose heart has been relieved of a grievous burden. He really
felt prodigiously relieved. To have to confess everything on the spot,
without a moment’s respite to combine a plan of apology, was a hard
task. Now, the wretch had stood this delicate and dangerous trial pretty
well, and thought he had managed cleverly enough to prepare for the day
of his trial a number of extenuating circumstances. But the magistrate
hardly gave him time to breathe.
“Not so fast,” he said: “we are not done yet. What were the conditions
which you and Chevassat agreed upon?”
“Oh! very simple, sir. I, for my part, said yes to everything he
proposed. He magnetized me, I tell you, that man! We agreed, therefore,
that he would pay me four thousand francs in advance, and that, after
the accident, he would give me six thousand certain, and a portion of
the sum which he would secure.”
“Thus you undertook, for ten thousand francs, to murder a man?”
“I thought”--
“That sum is very far from those fabulous amounts by which you said you
had been blinded and carried away.”
“Pardon me! There was that share in the great fortune.”
“Ah! You knew very well that Chevassat would never have paid you
anything.”