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But, in proportion as the young girl thus confirmed her sincerity, the brow of the countess grew darker and sterner, and passing blushes mantled her cheek. At last she said with haughty irony, "Admirable!" "Madam!" "You condescend to give up M. de Boiscoran. Will that make him love me? You know very well he will not. You know that he loves you alone. Heroism with such conditions is easy enough.
You claim to be innocent. Help me, then, to establish your innocence. Speak, tell me what you were doing between eight and midnight." M. de Boiscoran had no time to answer. For some time already, half-suppressed cries, and the sound of a large crowd, had come up from the courtyard. A gendarme came in quite excited; and, turning to the magistrate and the commonwealth attorney, he said,
The proof of it is, that you went and asked everybody, Anthony, M. de Chandore, M. Seneschal, and myself, if M. de Boiscoran had not now, or had not had, some love-affair in the country. They all said No, being far from suspecting the truth. I alone, without giving you a positive answer, told you that I thought as you did, and told you so in M. de Chandore's presence."
A small gray-haired man, jovial and cheerful, came running up, and at once proceeded to tell at full length how a neighbor had told him what had happened, and how the magistrate had left town, whereupon he, also, had started on foot, and come after him as fast as he could. "Now will you go to Boiscoran?" asked the mayor. "I do not know yet. Mechinet will have to look for some conveyance."
With infinite care the magistrate carried the basin to the table at which Mechinet had taken a sea; and, pointing at it, he asked M. de Boiscoran, "Is that the water in which you washed your hands last night after coming home?" "Yes," replied the other with an air of careless indifference. "You had been handling charcoal, or some inflammable material." "Don't you see?"
"This is a fearful calamity," he said. "What is your opinion?" "Ah! do I know it myself? I have lost my head: the whole thing looks to me like a nightmare." "You cannot really believe that M. de Boiscoran is guilty?" "I believe nothing. My reason tells me he is innocent. I feel he must be innocent; and yet I see terrible evidence rising against him." The attorney was overwhelmed.
"But that is sheer infamy, sir," she stammered. "What! M. de Boiscoran should have dared tell you that I, the countess Claudieuse, have been his mistress?" "He certainly said so, madam; and he affirms, that a few moments before the fire broke out, he was near you, and that, if his hands were blackened, it was because he had burned your letters and his."
And that coward should be a Boiscoran: my blood should flow in his veins! Come, come, madam, Jacques is no son of mine." Crushed as the marchioness had seemed to be till now, she rose under this atrocious insult. "Sir!" she cried. But M. de Boiscoran was not in a state to listen to her. "I know what I am saying," he went on. "I remember every thing, if you have forgotten every thing.
All of a sudden, at these words, the eminent advocate of Sauveterre rose from his chair, and, placing himself before Jacques de Boiscoran, he asked, looking at him with one of those glances which seem to pierce our innermost heart, "And then?" Jacques had to summon all the energy that was left him to be able to continue with a semblance of calmness, at least,
But M. Folgat was not the man to be taken in twice the same day. Concealing his apprehensions under the most punctilious politeness, he replied, "I have heard all kinds of reports; but they do not affect me. M. de Boiscoran has too much confidence in the excellency of his cause and the justice of his country to think of escaping. I only came to confer with him."
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