forsakes me and laughs at me. The president
of the court, my immediate superior, said to me this morning with
intolerable irony, 'I hardly know any magistrate who would be able as
you are to sacrifice his relations and his friends to the interests of
truth and justice. You are one of the ancients: you will rise high.'"

His friend could not listen any further. He said,--

"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
t