M. Daubigeon, the commonwealth attorney, learned that morning from his
chief clerk what had happened, and how the proceedings in the Boiscoran
case were necessarily null and void on account of a fatal error in form.
The counsel of the defence had lost no time, and, after spending the
whole night in consultation, had early that morning presented their
application for a new trial to the court.
The commonwealth attorney took no pains to conceal his satisfaction.
“Now,” he cried, “this will worry my friend Galpin, and clip his wings
considerably; and yet I had called his attention to the lines of Horace,
in which he speaks of Phaeton’s sad fate, and says,--
‘Terret ambustus Phaeton avaras Spes.’
But he would not listen to me, forgetting, that, without prudence, force
is a danger. And there he is now, in great difficulty, I am sure.”
And at once he made haste to dress, and to go and see M. Galpin in
order to hear all the details accurately, as he told his clerk, but, in
reality, in order to enjoy to his heart’s content the discomfiture of
the ambitious magistrate.
He found him furious, and ready to tear his hair.
“I am disgraced,” he repeated: “I am ruined; I am lost. All my
prospects, all my hopes, are gone. I shall never be forgiven for such an
oversight.”
To look at M. Daubigeon, you would have thought he was sincerely
distressed.
“Is it really true,” he said with an air of assumed pity,--“is it really
true, what they tell me, that this unlucky mistake was made by you?”
“By me? Yes, indeed! I forgot those wretched details which a scholar
knows by heart. Can you understand that? And to say that no one noticed
my inconceivable blindness! Neither the first court of inquiry, nor
the attorney-general himself, nor the presiding judge, ever said a word
about it. It is my fate. And that is to be the result of my labors.
Everybody, no doubt, said, ‘Oh! M. Galpin has the case in hand; he knows
all about it: no need to look after the matter when such a man has taken
hold of it.’ And here I am. Oh! I might kill myself.”
“It is all the more fortunate,” replied M. Daubigeon, “that yesterday
the case was hanging on a thread.”