“There was no need of this letter to confirm my opinion. At the bottom
of this affair there is a secret which none of us have found out yet.
But M. de Boiscoran acts very rashly in playing in this way with a
criminal prosecution. Why did he not explain at once? What was easy
yesterday may be less easy to-morrow, and perhaps impossible in a week.”
“Jacques, sir, is a superior man,” cried Dionysia, “and whatever he says
is perfectly sure to be the right thing.”
His mother’s entrance prevented the young lawyer from making any reply.
Two hours’ rest had restored to the old lady a part of her energy, and
her usual presence of mind; and she now asked that a telegram should be
sent to her husband.
“It is the least we can do,” said M. de Chandore in an undertone,
“although it will be useless, I dare say. Boiscoran does not care that
much for his son. Pshaw! Ah! if it was a rare _faience_, or a plate that
is wanting in his collection, then would it be a very different story.”
Still the despatch was drawn up and sent, at the very moment when a
servant came in, and announced that dinner was ready. The meal was less
sad than they had anticipated. Everybody, to be sure, felt a heaviness
at heart as he thought that at the same hour a jailer probably brought
Jacques his meal to his cell; nor could Dionysia keep from dropping a
tear when she saw M. Folgat sitting in her lover’s place. But no one,
except the young advocate, thought that Jacques was in real danger.
M. Seneschal, however, who came in just as coffee was handed round,
evidently shared M. Folgat’s apprehensions. The good mayor came to hear
the news, and to tell his friends how he had spent the day. The funeral
of the firemen had passed off quietly, although amid deep emotion. No
disturbance had taken place, as was feared; and Dr. Seignebos had not
spoken at the graveyard. Both a disturbance and a row would have been
badly received, said M. Seneschal; for he was sorry to say, the immense
majority of the people of Sauveterre did not doubt M. de Boiscoran’s
guilt. In several groups he had heard people say, “And still you will
see they will not condemn him. A poor devil who should commit such a
horrible crime would be hanged sure enough; but the son of the Marquis
de Boiscoran--you will see, he’ll come out of it as white as snow.”
The rolling of a carriage, which stopped at the door, fortunately
interrupted him at this point.
“Who can that be?” asked Dionysia, half frightened.
They heard in the passage the noise of steps and voices, something like
a scuffle; and almost instantly the tenant’s son Michael pushed open the
door of the sitting-room, crying out,--
“I have gotten him! Here he is!”
And with these words he pushed in Cocoleu, all struggling, and looking
around him, like a wild beast caught in a trap.
“Upon my word, my good fellow,” said M. Seneschal, “you have done better
than the gendarmes!”
The manner in which Michael winked with his eye showed that he had not a
very exalted opinion of the cleverness of the gendarmes.
“I promised the baron,” he said, “I would get hold of Cocoleu somehow or
other. I knew that at certain times he went and buried himself, like the
wild beast that he is, in a hole which he has scratched under a rock in
the densest part of the forest of Rochepommier. I had discovered this
den of his one day by accident; for a man might pass by a hundred times,
and never dream of where it was. But, as soon as the baron told me that
the innocent had disappeared, I said to myself, ‘I am sure he is in his
hole: let us go and see.’ So I gathered up my legs; I ran down to the
rocks: and there was Cocoleu. But it was not so easy to pull him out of
his den. He would not come; and, while defending himself, he bit me in
the hand, like the mad dog that he is.”
And Michael held up his left hand, wrapped up in a bloody piece of
linen.
“It was pretty hard work to get the madman here. I was compelled to tie
him hand and foot, and to carry him bodily to my father’s house. There
we put him into the little carriage, and here he is. Just look at the
pretty fellow!”
He was hideous at that moment, with his livid face spotted all over with
red marks, his hanging lips covered with white foam, and his brutish
glances.
“Why would you not come?” asked M. Seneschal.
The idiot looked as if he did not hear.
“Why did you bite Michael?” continued the mayor.
Cocoleu made no reply.
“Do you know that M. de Boiscoran is in prison because of what you have
said?”
Still no reply.
“Ah!” said Michael, “it is of no use to question him. You might beat him
till to-morrow, and he would rather give up the ghost than say a word.”
“I am--I am hungry,” stammered Cocoleu.