ranville. "But it is an outlay of twenty to thirty million francs!
Just try asking the Chambers for thirty millions for the more decent
accommodation of Justice."

The sound of many footsteps and a clatter of arms fell on their ear. It
would be Jacques Collin.

The public prosecutor assumed a mask of gravity that hid the man.
Camusot imitated his chief.

The office-boy opened the door, and Jacques Collin came in, quite calm
and unmoved.

"You wished to speak to me," said Monsieur de Granville. "I am ready to
listen."

"Monsieur le Comte, I am Jacques Collin. I surrender!"

Camusot started; the public prosecutor was immovable.

"As you may suppose, I have my reasons for doing this," said Jacques
Collin, with an ironical glance at the two magistrates. "I must
inconvenience you greatly; for if I had remained a Spanish priest, you
would simply have packed me off with an escort of gendarmes as far as
the frontier by Bayonne, and there Spanish bayonets would have relieved
you of me."

The lawyers sat silent and imperturbable.

"Monsieur le Comte," the convict went on, "the reasons which have led me
to this step are yet more pressing than this, but devilish personal to
myself. I can tell them to no one but you.--If you are afraid----"

"Afraid of whom? Of what?" said the Comte de Granville.

In attitude and expression, in the turn of his head, his demeanor
and his look, this distinguished judge was at this moment a living
embodiment of the law which ought to supply us with the noblest examples
of civic courage. In this brief instant he was on a level with the
magistrates of the old French Parlement in the time of the civil wars,
when the presidents found themselves face to face with death, and stood,
made of marble, like the statues that commemorate them.

"Afraid to be alone with an escaped convict!"

"Leave us, Monsieur Camusot," said the public prosecutor at once.

"I was about to suggest that you should bind me hand and foot," Jacques
Collin coolly added, with an ominous glare at the two gentlemen. He
paused, and then said with great gravity:

"Monsieur le Comte, you had my esteem, but you now command my
admiration."

"Then you think you are formidable?" said the magistrate, with a look of
supreme contempt.

"_Think_ myself formidable?" retorted the convict. "Why think about it?
I am, and I know it."

Jacques Collin took a chair and sat down, with all the ease of a man who
feels himself a match for