ed.

"Be patient. They are feeble traces, I admit, and such as could not be
produced in court; but from day to day they may become decisive. And
already they have had one good effect: they have brought us back M.
Magloire."

"O God! Could I really be saved?"

"I shall leave to M. Folgat," continued the marquis, "the satisfaction
of telling you the result of his efforts. He can explain their bearing
better than I could. And you will not have long to wait; for last night,
or rather this morning, when we separated, he and M. Magloire agreed to
meet here at the prison, before two o'clock."

A few minutes later a rapid step approached in the passage; and Trumence
appeared, the prisoner of whom Blangin had made an assistant, and whom
Mechinet had employed to carry Jacques's letters to Dionysia. He was a
tall well-made man of twenty-five or six years, whose large mouth and
small eyes were perpetually laughing. A vagabond without hearth or home,
Trumence had once been a land-owner. At the death of his parents, when
he was only eighteen years old, Trumence had come into possession of a
house surrounded by a yard, a garden, several acres of land, and a salt
meadow; all worth about fifteen thousand francs. Unfortunately the time
for the conscription was near. Like many young men of that district,
Trumence believed in witchcraft, and had gone to buy a charm, which cost
him fifty francs. It consisted of three tamarind-branches gathered on
Christmas Eve, and tied together by a magic number of hairs drawn from
a dead man's head. Having sewed this charm into his waistcoat, Trumence
had gone to town, and, plunging his hand boldly into the urn, had drawn
number three. This was unexpected. But as he had a great horror of
military service, and, well-made as he was, felt quite sure that he
would not be rejected, he determined to employ a chance much more
certain to succeed; namely, to borrow money in order to buy a
substitute.

As he was a land-owner, he found no difficulty in meeting with an
obliging person, who consented to lend him for two years thirty-five
hundred francs, in return for a first mortgage on his property. When the
papers were signed, and Trumence had the money in his pocket, he set out
for Rochefort, where dealers in substitutes abounded; and for the sum of
two thousand francs, exclusive of some smaller items, they furnished him
a substitute of the best quality.

Delighted with the operation, Trumence was about to r