ns."

"I had the right to refuse to answer them," muttered the hapless Lucien,
whose wits had come back to him with perfect lucidity.

"Coquart, read the minutes to the prisoner."

"I am the prisoner once more," said Lucien to himself.

While the clerk was reading, Lucien came to a determination which
compelled him to smooth down Monsieur Camusot. When Coquart's drone
ceased, the poet started like a man who has slept through a noise to
which his ears are accustomed, and who is roused by its cessation.

"You have to sign the report of your examination," said the judge.

"And am I at liberty?" asked Lucien, ironical in his turn.

"Not yet," said Camusot; "but to-morrow, after being confronted with
Jacques Collin, you will no doubt be free. Justice must now ascertain
whether or no you are accessory to the crimes this man may have
committed since his escape so long ago as 1820. However, you are no
longer in the secret cells. I will write to the Governor to give you a
better room."

"Shall I find writing materials?"

"You can have anything supplied to you that you ask for; I will give
orders to that effect by the usher who will take you back."

Lucien mechanically signed the minutes and initialed the notes in
obedience to Coquart's indications with the meekness of a resigned
victim. A single fact will show what a state he was in better than the
minutest description. The announcement that he would be confronted with
Jacques Collin had at once dried the drops of sweat from his brow, and
his dry eyes glittered with a terrible light. In short, he became, in an
instant as brief as a lightning flash, what Jacques Collin was--a man of
iron.

In men whose nature is like Lucien's, a nature which Jacques Collin
had so thoroughly fathomed, these sudden transitions from a state of
absolute demoralization to one that is, so to speak, metallic,--so
extreme is the tension of every vital force,--are the most startling
phenomena of mental vitality. The will surges up like the lost waters
of a spring; it diffuses itself throughout the machinery that lies ready
for the action of the unknown matter that constitutes it; and then
the corpse is a man again, and the man rushes on full of energy for a
supreme struggle.

Lucien laid Esther's letter next his heart, with the miniature she had
returned to him. Then he haughtily bowed to Monsieur Camusot, and went
off with a firm step down the corridors, between two gendarmes.

"That is a