to the facts.
At Angouleme this lawyer, from the statements of your sister and
brother-in-law, learned that they not only had hardly lent you any
money, but also that their inheritance consisted of land, of some extent
no doubt, but that the whole amount of invested capital was not more
than about two hundred thousand francs.--Now you cannot wonder that such
people as the Grandlieus should reject a fortune of which the source is
more than doubtful. This, monsieur, is what a lie has led to----"

Lucien was petrified by this revelation, and the little presence of mind
he had preserved deserted him.

"Remember," said Camusot, "that the police and the law know all they
want to know.--And now," he went on, recollecting Jacques Collin's
assumed paternity, "do you know who this pretended Carlos Herrera is?"

"Yes, monsieur; but I knew it too late."

"Too late! How? Explain yourself."

"He is not a priest, not a Spaniard, he is----"

"An escaped convict?" said the judge eagerly.

"Yes," replied Lucien, "when he told me the fatal secret, I was
already under obligations to him; I had fancied I was befriended by a
respectable priest."

"Jacques Collin----" said Monsieur Camusot, beginning a sentence.

"Yes," said Lucien, "his name is Jacques Collin."

"Very good. Jacques Collin has just now been identified by another
person, and though he denies it, he does so, I believe, in your
interest. But I asked whether you knew who the man is in order to prove
another of Jacques Collin's impostures."

Lucien felt as though he had hot iron in his inside as he heard this
alarming statement.

"Do you not know," Camusot went on, "that in order to give color to
the extraordinary affection he has for you, he declares that he is your
father?"

"He! My father?--Oh, monsieur, did he tell you that?"

"Have you any suspicion of where the money came from that he used to
give you? For, if I am to believe the evidence of the letter you have
in your hand, that poor girl, Mademoiselle Esther, must have done you
lately the same services as Coralie formerly rendered you. Still, for
some years, as you have just admitted, you lived very handsomely without
receiving anything from her."

"It is I who should ask you, monsieur, whence convicts get their money!
Jacques Collin my father!--Oh, my poor mother!" and Lucien burst into
tears.

"Coquart, read out to the prisoner that part of Carlos Herrera's
examination in which he said that Lucien de