mallpox. This hesitancy startled the magistrate.

"It is his build, his height," said the agent. "Oh! yes, it is you,
Jacques Collin!" he went on, as he examined his eyes, forehead, and
ears. "There are some things which no disguise can alter.... Certainly
it is he, Monsieur Camusot. Jacques has the scar of a cut on his left
arm. Take off his coat, and you will see..."

Jacques Collin was again obliged to take off his coat; Bibi-Lupin turned
up his sleeve and showed the scar he had spoken of.

"It is the scar of a bullet," replied Don Carlos Herrera. "Here are
several more."

"Ah! It is certainly his voice," cried Bibi-Lupin.

"Your certainty," said Camusot, "is merely an opinion; it is not proof."

"I know that," said Bibi-Lupin with deference. "But I will bring
witnesses. One of the boarders from the Maison Vauquer is here already,"
said he, with an eye on Collin.

But the prisoner's set, calm face did not move a muscle.

"Show the person in," said Camusot roughly, his dissatisfaction
betraying itself in spite of his seeming indifference.

This irritation was not lost on Jacques Collin, who had not counted
on the judge's sympathy, and sat lost in apathy, produced by his deep
meditations in the effort to guess what the cause could be.

The usher now showed in Madame Poiret. At this unexpected appearance the
prisoner had a slight shiver, but his trepidation was not remarked by
Camusot, who seemed to have made up his mind.

"What is your name?" asked he, proceeding to carry out the formalities
introductory to all depositions and examinations.

Madame Poiret, a little old woman as white and wrinkled as a sweetbread,
dressed in a dark-blue silk gown, gave her name as Christine Michelle
Michonneau, wife of one Poiret, and her age as fifty-one years, said
that she was born in Paris, lived in the Rue des Poules at the corner
of the Rue des Postes, and that her business was that of lodging-house
keeper.

"In 1818 and 1819," said the judge, "you lived, madame, in a
boarding-house kept by a Madame Vauquer?"

"Yes, monsieur; it was there that I met Monsieur Poiret, a retired
official, who became my husband, and whom I have nursed in his bed this
twelvemonth past. Poor man! he is very bad; and I cannot be long away
from him."

"There was a certain Vautrin in the house at the time?" asked Camusot.

"Oh, monsieur, that is quite a long story; he was a horrible man, from
the galleys----"

"You helped to get hi