ome one to get him out of the scrape."

"I am only a considering cap; you are the brain," said Camusot.

"Well, the sitting is closed; give your Melie a kiss; it is one
o'clock."

And Madame Camusot went to bed, leaving her husband to arrange his
papers and his ideas in preparation for the task of examining the two
prisoners next morning.

And thus, while the prison vans were conveying Jacques Collin and Lucien
to the Conciergerie, the examining judge, having breakfasted, was
making his way across Paris on foot, after the unpretentious fashion of
Parisian magistrates, to go to his chambers, where all the documents in
the case were laid ready for him.

This was the way of it: Every examining judge has a head-clerk, a sort
of sworn legal secretary--a race that perpetuates itself without any
premiums or encouragement, producing a number of excellent souls in whom
secrecy is natural and incorruptible. From the origin of the Parlement
to the present day, no case has ever been known at the Palais de Justice
of any gossip or indiscretion on the part of a clerk bound to the
Courts of Inquiry. Gentil sold the release given by Louise de Savoie to
Semblancay; a War Office clerk sold the plan of the Russian campaign to
Czernitchef; and these traitors were more or less rich. The prospect of
a post in the Palais and professional conscientiousness are enough to
make a judge's clerk a successful rival of the tomb--for the tomb has
betrayed many secrets since chemistry has made such progress.

This official is, in fact, the magistrate's pen. It will be understood
by many readers that a man may gladly be the shaft of a machine,
while they wonder why he is content to remain a bolt; still a bolt is
content--perhaps the machinery terrifies him.

Camusot's clerk, a young man of two-and-twenty, named Coquart, had come
in the morning to fetch all the documents and the judge's notes, and
laid everything ready in his chambers, while the lawyer himself was
wandering along the quays, looking at the curiosities in the shops, and
wondering within himself:--

"How on earth am I to set to work with such a clever rascal as this
Jacques Collin, supposing it is he? The head of the Safety will know
him. I must look as if I knew what I was about, if only for the sake of
the police! I see so many insuperable difficulties, that the best plan
would be to enlighten the Marquise and the Duchess by showing them the
notes of the police, and I should