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But the present functions of our officials corresponded to those of the French juges d'instruction; and, having to elicit the truth from a low class of Orientals, they dealt with them after the fashion which alone they would recognize as serious.
I was forced to reflect there, crossing these halls, black with lawyers and judges, studded with great green doors behind which one heard the imposing noise of the hearings; and up higher, in the corridor of the Juges d'Instruction, during my hour's waiting on a bench, where the prison vermin crawled on my legs, while I listened to a lot of thieves, pickpockets, and loose women talking and laughing with the gendarmes, and the butts of the rifles echo in the passages, and the dull roll of prison vans.
Beautrelet suppressed a smile and, pretending not to see through the worthy magistrate, replied: "I confess. Monsieur le Juge d'Instruction, that, if I was not present at your inquiry just now, it was because I hoped that you would consent to tell me the results. May I ask what you have learned?"
It is permitted nowadays that a foreigner, if he demands it, can be accompanied by his legal adviser when he goes before the Juge d'Instruction. Otherwise, his lack of knowledge of the language might handicap him, and cause misunderstandings which would prejudice his case." He paused a moment, but I did not reply.
It was the Widow Lacoste herself, however, who demanded an exhumation and autopsy on the body of her late husband this as a preliminary to suing her traducers. On the orders of the Juge d'instruction an autopsy was begun on the 18th of December.
Long after the case was pigeonholed by the unintelligent care of M. le Juge d'Instruction Faure, the newspapers made efforts, at intervals, to fathom the mystery. One evening paper alone, which knew all the gossip of the theaters, said: "We recognize the touch of the Opera ghost." And even that was written by way of irony.
Her early life lay so far below in a world remote and detached; a little house in a village of the Canton of Vaud with the genteel poverty that attended the slender salary of a juge d'instruction, and the weight of duties that accumulated on her shoulders.
At six o'clock in the evening, having finished all he had to do, M. Filluel, accompanied by M. Bredoux, his clerk, stood waiting for the carriage which was to take him back to Dieppe. He seemed restless, nervous. Twice over, he asked: "You haven't seen anything of young Beautrelet, I suppose?" "No, Monsieur le Juge d'Instruction, I can't say I have." "Where on earth can he be?
Here, I felt sure, the whole proceedings must collapse and the magistrate be sadly compelled to admit his impotence. The magistrate, however, appeared in nowise perturbed, nor did he for a moment relax his authoritative expression. He was turning over the pages of the Code d'Instruction Criminelle, glancing occasionally at a now wholly penitent prisoner trembling before the majesty of the law.
Many Juges d'instruction, feeling themselves independent, and knowing that they would not be prosecuted except for some flagrantly illegal act, gave way to indolence, and spent their time in inactivity.* In such cases it was always difficult, and sometimes impossible, to procure a condemnation for indolence must assume gigantic proportions in order to become a crime and the minister had to adopt the practice of appointing, without Imperial confirmation, temporary Juges d'instruction whom he could remove at pleasure.
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