“Ah, these are your orders, are they? Well, I tell you that I do not
mind them in the least. Who can prevent me from seeing my patient?
Tell me that! Let the commonwealth attorney give his orders in his
court-house as much as he chooses: that is all right. But in my
hospital! My sister, I am going to Cocoleu’s room.”
“Doctor, you cannot go there. There is a gendarme at the door.”
“A gendarme?”
“Yes, he came this morning with the strictest orders.”
For a moment the doctor was overcome. Then he suddenly broke out with
unusual violence, and a voice that made the windows shake,--
“This is unheard of! This is an abominable abuse of power! I’ll have my
rights, and justice shall be done me, if I have to go to Thiers!”
Then he rushed out without ceremony, crossed the yard, and disappeared
like an arrow, in the direction of the court-house. At that very moment
M. Daubigeon was getting up, feeling badly because he had had a bad,
sleepless night, thanks to this unfortunate affair of M. de Boiscoran,
which troubled him sorely; for he was almost of M. Galpin’s opinion. In
vain he recalled Jacques’s noble character, his well-known uprightness,
his keen sense of honor, the evidence was so strong, so overwhelming!
He wanted to doubt; but experience told him that a man’s past is
no guarantee for his future. And, besides, like many great criminal
lawyers, he thought, what he would never have ventured to say openly,
that some great criminals act while they are under the influence of a
kind of vertigo, and that this explains the stupidity of certain crimes
committed by men of superior intelligence.
Since his return from Boiscoran, he had kept close in his house; and he
had just made up his mind not to leave the house that day, when some one
rang his bell furiously. A moment later Dr. Seignebos fell into the room
like a bombshell.
“I know what brings you, doctor,” said M. Daubigeon. “You come about
that order I have given concerning Cocoleu.”
“Yes, indeed, sir! That order is an insult.”
“I have been asked to give it as a matter of necessity, by M. Galpin.”
“And why did you not refuse? You alone are responsible for it in my
eyes. You are commonwealth attorney, consequently the head of the bar,
and superior to M. Galpin.”