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Updated: June 23, 2025
For a minute or so M. Galpin kept silent, thinking whether he had forgotten any thing. Then he asked suddenly, "How far is it from here to Valpinson?" "Three miles, sir," replied Anthony. "If you were going there, what road would you take?" "The high road which passes Brechy." "You would not go across the marsh?" "Certainly not." "Why not?"
The reason is, that to-day this terrible Valpinson case will be brought up in court, after having for so many weeks now agitated our people. To-day this man who is charged with such fearful crimes is to be tried. Hence all steps are eagerly turned towards the court-house: the people all hurry, and rush in the same direction. The court-house!
Chanzy had rewarded him, when wounded, with the cross of the legion of honor. "And such a man should have committed such a crime at Valpinson," said M. Daubigeon to the magistrate. "No, it is impossible! And no doubt he will very easily scatter all our doubts to the four winds." "And that will be done at once," said young Ribot; "for here we are."
It was he who went and brought the children of the countess out of their room. What has become of him? Cocoleu, Cocoleu!" One must have lived in the country, among these simple-minded peasants, to understand the excitement and the fury of all these men and women as they crowded around the ruins of Valpinson.
It must be said, in justice to the several hundred peasants who were crowding around the smoking ruins of Valpinson, that they treated the madman who had accused M. de Boiscoran of such a crime, neither with cruel jokes nor with fierce curses. Unfortunately, first impulses, which are apt to be good impulses, do not last long.
"That I have been your lover; that I went to Valpinson by appointment with you; that the cartridge-case which was found there was used by me to get fire; that my blackened hands were soiled by the half-burnt fragment of our letters, which I had tried to scatter." "Never!" cried the countess. Jacques's face turned crimson, as he said with an accent of merciless severity, "It shall be told!
You helped her to put a sack of flour on her ass, which she could not lift alone. Do you deny it? No, you are right; for, look here! on the sleeve of your coat I see something white, which, no doubt, is flour from her bag." M. de Boiscoran hung his head. The magistrate went on, "You confess, then, that last night, between ten and eleven you were at Valpinson?" "No, sir, I do not."
"I believe that my statement, which is founded upon the most exact truth, explains the charges brought against me by M. Galpin. It explains how I tried to keep my visit to Valpinson secret; how I was met in going and in coming back, and at hours which correspond with the time of the fire. It explains, finally, how I came at first to deny.
Will he say what he told me, that, after having been the lover of the Countess Claudieuse, he had gone to Valpinson to carry her back her letters, and to get his own, and that they are all burnt? Suppose he says so. Immediately then there will arise a storm of indignation; and he will be overwhelmed with curses and with contempt.
Perhaps Cocoleu had never said what he was reported to have said. "The fact is," said one of the tenants at Valpinson, "that the poor devil, so to say, never sleeps, and that he is roaming about all night around the house and the farm buildings." This was a new light for M. Galpin; suddenly changing the form of his interrogatory, he asked Cocoleu, "Where did you spend the night?"
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