and surveying his audience with flashing eyes, he explained, in a clear
and ringing voice, the shameful conspiracy to obtain possession of the
count's millions, and the abominable machinations by which Mademoiselle
Marguerite and himself had been victimized. Then when he had finished
his explanations he added, in a still more commanding voice, "Now look;
you can read the culprits' guilt on their faces. One is the scoundrel
known to you as the Viscount de Coralth, but Paul Violaine is his true
name. He was formerly an accomplice of the notorious Mascarot; he is a
cowardly villain, for he is married, and leaves his wife and children to
die of starvation!" The Viscount de Coralth fairly bellowed with rage.
But Pascal did not heed him. "The other criminal is the Marquis de
Valorsay," he added, in the same ringing tone. There was, moreover, a
third culprit who would have inspired mingled pity and disgust if any
one had noticed him shrinking into a corner, terrified and muttering:
"It wasn't my fault, my wife compelled me to do it!" This was General de
Fondege.

Pascal did not mention his name. But it was not absolutely necessary
he should do so, and besides, he remembered Marguerite's entreaty
respecting the son.

However, while the young lawyer was speaking, the marquis had summoned
all his energy and assurance to his aid. Desperate as his plight
might be, he would not surrender. "This is an infamous conspiracy," he
exclaimed. "Baron, you shall atone for this. The man's an impostor!--he
lies!--all that he says is false!"

"Yes, it is false!" echoed M. de Coralth.

But a clamor arose, drowning these protestations, and the most
opprobrious epithets could be heard on every side.

"How will you prove your assertion?" cried M. de Valorsay.

"Don't try that dodge on us!" shouted Chupin. "Vantrasson and mother
Leon have confessed everything."

"Who defrauded us all with Domingo?" cried several people; and, loud
above all the others, Kami-Bey bawled out: "To say nothing of the fact
that the sale of your racing stud was a complete swindle!"

Meanwhile, Pascal's former friends and associates, his brother advocates
and the magistrates who had listened to his first efforts at the
bar, crowded round him, pressing his hands, embracing him almost to
suffocation, censuring themselves for having suspected him, the very
soul of honor, and pleading in self-justification the degenerate age in
which we live--an age in which we daily s