is man in observing the slightest
differences in the medley of things and people. Armed with hope, as
the last of the Horatii was armed with his sword, he expected help. To
anybody but this Machiavelli of the hulks, this hope would have
seemed so absolutely impossible to realize that he would have gone
on mechanically, as all guilty men do. Not one of them ever dreams of
resistance when he finds himself in the position to which justice and
the Paris police bring suspected persons, especially those who, like
Collin and Lucien, are in solitary confinement.

It is impossible to conceive of the sudden isolation in which a
suspected criminal is placed. The gendarmes who apprehend him, the
commissioner who questions him, those who take him to prison, the
warders who lead him to his cell--which is actually called a cachot, a
dungeon or hiding-place, those again who take him by the arms to put him
into a prison-van--every being that comes near him from the moment of
his arrest is either speechless, or takes note of all he says, to be
repeated to the police or to the judge. This total severance, so simply
effected between the prisoner and the world, gives rise to a complete
overthrow of his faculties and a terrible prostration of mind,
especially when the man has not been familiarized by his antecedents
with the processes of justice. The duel between the judge and the
criminal is all the more appalling because justice has on its side the
dumbness of blank walls and the incorruptible coldness of its agents.

But Jacques Collin, or Carlos Herrera--it will be necessary to speak of
him by one or the other of these names according to the circumstances of
the case--had long been familiar with the methods of the police, of
the jail, and of justice. This colossus of cunning and corruption had
employed all his powers of mind, and all the resources of mimicry, to
affect the surprise and anility of an innocent man, while giving the
lawyers the spectacle of his sufferings. As has been told, Asie, that
skilled Locusta, had given him a dose of poison so qualified as to
produce the effects of a dreadful illness.

Thus Monsieur Camusot, the police commissioner, and the public
prosecutor had been baffled in their proceedings and inquiries by the
effects apparently of an apoplectic attack.

"He has taken poison!" cried Monsieur Camusot, horrified by the
sufferings of the self-styled priest when he had been carried down from
the attic writhing