as on the wrong track; but the
detective's head was now swelled with importance and he would not draw
back. Following his extravagant deductions he decided that the
complicity of Gousset, convicted of drinking and playing skittles the
whole way, was undoubted, and the poor man was arrested in his village
where he had returned to his wife and children to recover from his
excitement. At last Manginot, evidently animated by his blunders, took
it into his head that Dupont d'Aisy himself might well have kept
Pinteville at dinner and excited the peasants in order to secure the
retreat of the brigands, and issued a warrant against him to the
stupefaction of Caffarelli who thus saw imprisoned all those whose
conduct he had praised, and whom he had given as examples of devotion.
Thus, in a region where he had only to touch, so to say, to catch a
criminal, Captain Manginot was unlucky enough to incarcerate only the
innocent, and to complete the irony, these innocent prisoners made such
a poor face before the court of enquiry that his suspicions were
justified. Acquet was very anxious to denounce his wife, but he would
not speak without certainty and the magistrate before whom he appeared
at Falaise notes that in the course of interrogations "he contradicted
himself; his replies were far from satisfactory, though he arranged them
with the greatest care and reflected long before speaking." At the first
insinuation he made against Mme. de Combray and her daughter, the judge
indignantly silenced him, and sent him well-guarded to Caen where he was
put in close custody. As to Hebert, not wishing to compromise the ladies
of La Bijude to whom he was completely devoted, he scarcely replied to
the questions put to him; all, even to Dupont d'Aisy lent themselves to
the suspicions of Manginot. Sixty guns were found at the mayor's house,
which seemed an excessive number, even for the great sportsman he prided
himself on being, and here again all indications tended to convince
Manginot that he was on the right track.

Mme. Acquet, meanwhile feigned the greatest security. Seeing things
straying from the right way, she might indeed imagine that she was
removed from all danger, and she had besides, other anxieties. The
Chevalier had been waiting in Paris since the 7th of June for the money
he so urgently needed, and as nothing appeared in spite of his
reiterated demands, he decided to come and fetch it himself; he did not
dare, however, to appear