The famous night of the fire at Valpinson had been a godsend to the good people of Sauveterre. They had henceforth an inexhaustible topic of discussion, ever new and ever rich in unexpected conjectures,--the Boiscoran case. When people met in the streets, they simply asked,--"What are they doing now?"
Whenever, therefore, M. Galpin went from the court-house to the prison, or came striding up National Street with his stiff, slow step, twenty good housewives peeped from behind their curtains to read in his face some of the secrets of the trial. They saw, however, nothing there but traces of intense anxiety, and a pallor which became daily more marked. They said to each other,--"You will see poor M. Galpin will catch the jaundice from it."The expression was commonplace; but it conveyed exactly the feelings of the ambitious lawyer. This Boiscoran case had become like a festering wound to him, which irritated him incessantly and intolerably.
"I have lost my sleep by it," he told the commonwealth attorney.
Excellent M. Daubigeon, who had great trouble in moderating his zeal, did not pity him particularly. He would say in reply,--"Whose fault is it? But you want to rise in the world; and increasing fortune is always followed by increasing care.
"Ah!" said the magistrate. "I have only done my duty, and, if I had to begin again, I would do just the same."Still every day he saw more clearly that he was in a false position.
Public opinion, strongly arrayed against M. de Boiscoran, was not, on that account, very favorable to him. Everybody believed Jacques guilty, and wanted him to be punished with all the rigor of the law;but, on the other hand, everybody was astonished that M. Galpin should choose to act as magistrate in such a case. There was a touch of treachery in this proceeding against a former friend, in looking everywhere for evidence against him, in driving him into court, that is to say, towards the galleys or the scaffold; and this revolted people's consciences.
The very way in which people returned his greeting, or avoided him altogether, made the magistrate aware of the feelings they entertained for him. This only increased his wrath against Jacques, and, with it his trouble. He had been congratulated, it is true, by the attorney-general; but there is no certainty in a trial, as long as the accused refuses to confess. The charges against Jacques, to be sure, were so overwhelming, that his being sent before the court was out of question. But by the side of the court there is still the jury.
"And in fine, my dear," said the commonwealth attorney, "you have not a single eye-witness. And from time immemorial an eye-witness has been looked upon as worth a hundred hearsays.""I have Cocoleu," said M. Galpin, who was rather impatient of all these objections.
"Have the doctors decided that he is not an idiot?""No: Dr. Seignebos alone maintains that doctrine.""Well, at least Cocoleu is willing to repeat his evidence?""No."
"Why, then you have virtually no witness!"Yes, M. Galpin understood it but too well, and hence his anxiety. The more he studied /his/ accused, the more he found him in an enigmatic and threatening position, which was ominous of evil.
"Can he have an /alibi/?" he thought. "Or does he hold in reserve one of those unforeseen revelations, which at the last moment destroy the whole edifice of the prosecution, and cover the prosecuting attorney with ridicule?"Whenever these thoughts occurred to him, they made big drops of perspiration run down his temples; and then he treated his poor clerk Mechinet like a slave. And that was not all. Although he lived more retired than ever, since this case had begun, many a report reached him from the Chandore family.
To be sure, he was a thousand miles from imagining that they had actually opened communications with the prisoner, and, what is more, that this intercourse was carried on by Mechinet, his own clerk. He would have laughed if one had come and told him that Dionysia had spent a night in prison, and paid Jacques a visit. But he heard continually of the hopes and the plans of the friends and relations of his prisoner; and he remembered, not without secret fear and trembling that they were rich and powerful, supported by relations in high places, beloved and esteemed by everybody. He knew that Dionysia was surrounded by devoted and intelligent men, by M. de Chandore, M.
Seneschal, Dr. Seignebos, M. Magloire, and, finally, that advocate whom the Marchioness de Boiscoran had brought down with her from Paris, M. Folgat.
"And Heaven knows what they would not try," he thought, "to rescue the guilty man from the hands of justice!"It may well be said, therefore, that never was prosecution carried on with as much passionate zeal or as much minute assiduity. Every one of the points upon which the prosecution relied became, for M. Galpin, a subject of special study. In less than a fortnight he examined sixty-seven witnesses in his office. He summoned the fourth part of the population of Brechy. He would have summoned the whole country, if he had dared.
But all his efforts were fruitless. After weeks of furious investigations, the inquiry was still at the same point, the mystery was still impenetrable. The prisoner had not refuted any of the charges made against him; but the magistrate had, also, not obtained a single additional piece of evidence after those he had secured on the first day.
There must be an end of this, however.