t."

The marchioness jumped up like a piece of mechanism, and cried,--

"What! Jacques before the assizes? My son? A Boiscoran?" And she fell
back into her chair. Not a muscle in Dionysia's face had moved. She said
in a strange tone of voice,--

"I was prepared for something worse. One may avoid the court."

With these words she left the room, shutting the door so violently, that
both the Misses Lavarande hastened after her. Now M. de Chandore thought
he might speak freely. He stood up before the marchioness, and gave vent
to that fearful wrath which had been rising within him for a long time.

"Your son," he cried, "your Jacques, I wish he were dead a thousand
times! The wretch who is killing my child, for you see he is killing
her."

And, without pity, he told her the whole story of Jacques and the
Countess Claudieuse. The marchioness was overcome. She had even ceased
to sob, and had not strength enough left to ask him to have pity on her.
And, when he had ended, she whispered to herself with an expression of
unspeakable suffering,--

"Adultery! Oh, my God! what punishment!"

XVI.

M. Folgat and M. Magloire went to the courthouse; and, as they descended
the steep street from M. de Chandore's house, the Paris lawyer said,--

"M. Galpin must fancy himself wonderfully safe in his position, that
he should grant the defence permission to see all the papers of the
prosecution."

Ordinarily such leave is given only after the court has begun
proceedings against the accused, and the presiding judge has questioned
him. This looks like crying injustice to the prisoner; and hence
arrangements can be made by which the rigor of the law is somewhat
mitigated. With the consent of the commonwealth attorney, and upon
his responsibility, the magistrate who had carried on the preliminary
investigation may inform the accused, or his counsel, by word of mouth,
or by a copy of all or of part, of what has happened during the first
inquiry. That is what M. Galpin had done.

And on the part of a man who was ever ready to interpret the law in its
strictest meaning, and who no more dared proceed without authority for
every step than a blind man without his staff,--or on the part of such
a man, an enemy, too, of M. de Boiscoran, this permission granted to
the defence was full of meaning. But did it really mean what M. Folgat
thought it did?

"I am almost sure you are mistaken," said M. Magloire. "I know the
good man, having p