"Now, my lady, hot foot, and make haste!" said Asie, seeing the change,
and guessing what had caused it.

"But," said Madame de Maufrigneuse, "if the first thing is to prevent
Lucien's being examined by Monsieur Camusot, we can do that by writing
two words to the judge and sending your man with it to the Palais,
Leontine."

"Then come into my room," said Madame de Serizy.

This is what was taking place at the Palais while Lucien's protectresses
were obeying the orders issued by Jacques Collin. The gendarmes placed
the moribund prisoner on a chair facing the window in Monsieur Camusot's
room; he was sitting in his place in front of his table. Coquart, pen in
hand, had a little table to himself a few yards off.

The aspect of a magistrate's chambers is not a matter of indifference;
and if this room had not been chosen intentionally, it must be owned
that chance had favored justice. An examining judge, like a painter,
requires the clear equable light of a north window, for the criminal's
face is a picture which he must constantly study. Hence most magistrates
place their table, as this of Camusot's was arranged, so as to sit with
their back to the window and leave the face of the examinee in broad
daylight. Not one of them all but, by the end of six months, has
assumed an absent-minded and indifferent expression, if he does not wear
spectacles, and maintains it throughout the examination.

It was a sudden change of expression in the prisoner's face, detected
by these means, and caused by a sudden point-blank question, that led
to the discovery of the crime committed by Castaing at the very
moment when, after a long consultation with the public prosecutor, the
magistrate was about to let the criminal loose on society for lack of
evidence. This detail will show the least intelligent person how living,
interesting, curious, and dramatically terrible is the conflict of an
examination--a conflict without witnesses, but always recorded. God
knows what remains on the paper of the scenes at white heat in which a
look, a tone, a quiver of the features, the faintest touch of color lent
by some emotion, has been fraught with danger, as though the adversaries
were savages watching each other to plant a fatal stroke. A report is no
more than the ashes of the fire.

"What is your real name?" Camusot asked Jacques Collin.

"Don Carlos Herrera, canon of the Royal Chapter of Toledo, and secret
envoy of His Majesty Ferdinand VII.