“Let us break off there: we shall never understand each other. Is
Jacques de Boiscoran innocent, or guilty? I do not know. But I do know
that he was the pleasantest man in the world, an admirable host, a good
talker, a scholar, and that he owned the finest editions of Horace and
Juvenal that I have ever seen. I liked him. I like him still; and it
distresses me to think of him in prison. I know that we had the most
pleasant relations with each other, and that now they are broken off.
And you, you complain! Am I the ambitious man? Do I want to have my
name connected with a world-famous trial? M. de Boiscoran will in all
probability be condemned. You ought to be delighted. And still you
complain? Why, one cannot have everything. Who ever undertook a great
enterprise, and never repented of it?”
After that there was nothing left for M. Galpin but to go away. He did
go in a fury, but at the same time determined to profit by the rude
truths which M. Daubigeon had told him; for he knew very well that his
friend represented in his views nearly the whole community. He was
fully prepared to carry out his plan. Immediately after his return, he
communicated the papers of the prosecution to the defence, and directed
his clerk to show himself as obliging as he could. M. Mechinet was not
a little surprised at these orders. He knew his master thoroughly,--this
magistrate, whose shadow he had been now for so many years.
“You are afraid, dear sir,” he had said to himself.
And as M. Galpin repeated the injunction, adding that the honor of
justice required the utmost courtesy when rigor was not to be employed,
the old clerk replied very gravely,--
“Oh! be reassured, sir. I shall not be wanting in courtesy.”
But, as soon as the magistrate turned his back, Mechinet laughed aloud.
“He would not recommend me to be obliging,” he thought, “if he suspected
the truth, and knew how far I am devoted to the defence. What a fury
he would be in, if he should ever find out that I have betrayed all the
secrets of the investigation, that I have carried letters to and from
the prisoner, that I have made of Trumence an accomplice, and of Blangin
the jailer an agent, that I have helped Miss Dionysia to visit her
betrothed in jail!”
For he had done all this four times more than enough to be dismissed
from his place, and even to become, at least for some months, one of
Blangin’s boarders. He shivered all down his back when he thought of
this; and he had been furiously angry, when, one evening, his sisters,
the devout seamstresses, had taken it into their heads to say to him,--
“Certainly, Mechinet, you are a different man ever since that visit of
Miss Chandore.”
“Abominable talkers!” he had exclaimed, in a tone of voice which
frightened them out of their wits. “Do you want to see me hanged?”
But, if he had these attacks of rage, he felt not a moment’s remorse.
Miss Dionysia had completely bewitched him; and he judged M. Galpin’s
conduct as severely as she did.
To be sure, M. Galpin had done nothing contrary to law; but he had
violated the spirit of the law. Having once summoned courage to
begin proceedings against his friend, he had not been able to remain
impartial. Afraid of being charged with timidity, he had exaggerated his
severity. And, above all, he had carried on the inquiry solely in the
interests of a conviction, as if the crime had been proved, and the
prisoner had not protested his innocence.
Now, Mechinet firmly believed in this innocence; and he was fully
persuaded that the day on which Jacques de Boiscoran saw his counsel
would be the day of his justification. This will show with what
eagerness he went to the court-house to wait for M. Magloire.
But at noon the great lawyer had not yet come. He was still consulting
with M. de Chandore.
“Could any thing amiss have happened?” thought the clerk.
And his restlessness was so great, that, instead of going home to
breakfast with his sisters, he sent an office-boy for a roll and a glass
of water. At last, as three o’clock struck, M. Magloire and M. Folgat
arrived; and Mechinet saw at once in their faces, that he had been
mistaken, and that Jacques had not explained. Still, before M. Magloire,
he did not dare inquire.
“Here are the papers,” he said simply, putting upon the table an immense
box.