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Updated: June 26, 2025
M. Daubigeon stopped him by a gesture. "Wait!" he said. And, taking up a blank form, he filled it up, rang the bell, and said to an usher of the court who had hastened in, giving him the printed paper, "I want this to be taken immediately. Make haste; and not a word!" Then Trumence was directed to go on; and he said, "There I was, standing in the middle of the street, feeling like a fool.
"And you are right!" exclaimed M. Daubigeon. "M. de Boiscoran is in his cell, utterly unaware of all the rumors that are afloat. It was Trumence who has run off, Trumence, the light-footed. He was kept in prison for form's sake only, and helped the keeper as a kind of assistant jailer.
Like many young men of that district, Trumence believed in witchcraft, and had gone to buy a charm, which cost him fifty francs. It consisted of three tamarind-branches gathered on Christmas Eve, and tied together by a magic number of hairs drawn from a dead man's head.
I came of my own accord." "Involuntarily, you mean?" "Quite by my own free will! Just ask the sergeant." The sergeant stepped forward, touched his cap, and reported, "That is the naked truth. Trumence came himself to our barrack, and said, 'I surrender as a prisoner. I wish to speak to the commonwealth attorney, and give importance evidence." The vagabond drew himself up proudly,
"Oh, reassure yourself, madame!" he added quickly. "That state of things did not last long. Soon M. de Boiscoran got up, and said, 'Why, I am a fool to despair!" "Did you hear him say so?" asked the old lady. "Not I. It was Trumence who heard it." "Trumence?" "Yes, one of our jail-birds.
"He was in prison at Sauveterre." "Yes, I know; he had broken down a gate near Brechy and" "Well, he has escaped." "Ah, the scamp!" "And we must find him again. They have put the gendarmes on his track; but will they catch him?" Michael burst out laughing. "Never in his life!" he said. "Trumence will make his way to Oleron, where he has friends; the gendarmes will be after him in vain."
"I am going to give you my best room," he said, "but first I have to give a receipt to the gendarme, and to enter you in my book." Thereupon he took down his huge, greasy register, and wrote the name of Jacques de Boiscoran beneath that of Trumence Cheminot, a vagabond who had just been arrested for having broken into a garden. It was all over.
What a fury he would be in, if he should ever find out that I have betrayed all the secrets of the investigation, that I have carried letters to and from the prisoner, that I have made of Trumence an accomplice, and of Blangin the jailer an agent, that I have helped Miss Dionysia to visit her betrothed in jail!"
"Poor countess!" murmured one of them. "Here is her husband dead, and they say one of her daughters is dying at home." But M. Daubigeon, the magistrate, and Mechinet were too preoccupied with their own interests to think of stopping for more reliable news. The way was open: they went in, and hastened to the clerk's office, where the gendarmes had taken Trumence, and now were guarding him.
Trumence boasted of being well known all along the coast, and even far into the department. And what was most surprising was that people did not blame him much for his idleness. Good housewives in the country would, it is true, greet him with a "Well, what do you want here, good-for-nothing?" But they would rarely refuse him a bowl of soup or a glass of white wine.
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