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Hence that hatred which the accused soon is unable to conceal any longer, which overflows in invectives, which breaks forth in threats of death, and which actually carries him so far that he points his gun at Count Claudieuse. The attorney-general next passes on to examine the charges, which, he declares, are overwhelming and irrefutable. Then he goes on,
Everybody looks overcome with excitement. Tears appear in the eyes of almost all the ladies. And yet those who watch the glances which are exchanged between M. de Boiscoran and Count Claudieuse cannot help asking themselves, if there is not something else between these two men, besides what the trial has made known.
"I beg you will notice, doctor, that Count Claudieuse himself deposed how, when he ran to the fire, he found the door shut from within, just as he had left it a few hours before." Dr. Seignebos returned a most ironical bow, and then asked, "Is there really only one door in the chateau at Valpinson?" "To my knowledge," said M. de Chandore, "there are at least three."
"Ah, it is the Countess Claudieuse," she went on, "that lady whom all revere as if she were a saint. And I, who only the other day marvelled at her fervor in praying, I who pitied her with all my heart, I Ah! I now see what they were hiding from me." Distressed by the blunder which he had committed, the young advocate said,
Would he dare to plead this statement, and assert that the Countess Claudieuse had been Jacques's mistress?" M. Folgat looked annoyed. "I don't know," he said in an undertone. "Well, I know you would not," exclaimed M. Magloire; "and you would be right, for you would risk your reputation without the slightest chance of saving Jacques. Yes, no chance whatever!
"Make haste and bring her here." From the time when M. Folgat first hoped for this recovery of the servant-girl, he had made up his mind to make the most of her evidence. He had slipped a portrait of the Countess Claudieuse into an album of Dionysia's, amidst some thirty photographs.
"I am going to tell you why! Last night, between ten and eleven, Valpinson was set on fire; and it has been burnt to the ground." "Oh!" "Last night Count Claudieuse was fired at twice." "Great God!" "And it is thought, in fact there are strong reasons to think, that you, Jacques de Boiscoran, are the incendiary and the assassin."
It looked like a mathematical deduction. "Whether he be innocent or guilty," said M. Magloire to his young colleague, "Jacques is lost, if we cannot get hold of some evidence against the Countess Claudieuse. And even in that case, even if it should be established that she is guilty, Jacques will always be looked upon as her accomplice."
"That was the reason why Jacques was so very angry when you spoke of inviting the Countess Claudieuse, and why he told you, that, if he saw her enter at one door, he would walk out of the other. We did not understand his aversion." "Alas! it was not aversion. Jacques only obeyed at that time the cunning lessons given him by the countess."
Dionysia threw herself back in utter amazement; and, raising her wide-open eyes to the young advocate, she said with an air of stupefaction, "The Countess Claudieuse?" M. Folgat saw his indiscretion. He had been under the impression that Jacques had told his betrothed every thing; and her very manner of speaking had confirmed him in his conviction.
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