ce before taking so
grave a step, and, finally, you intended to fulfil that religious duty
of which he spoke, and which you were rather reluctant to comply with."

"Well said!" approved the eminent lawyer of Sauveterre,--"very well
said!"

"So, you see, my dear client, it was for the purpose of consulting the
priest at Brechy that you deprived yourself of the pleasure of spending
the evening with your betrothed. Now let us see how that answers
the allegations of the prosecution. They ask you why you took to the
marshes. Why? Because it was the shortest way, and you were afraid of
finding the priest in bed. Nothing more natural; for it is well known
that the excellent man is in the habit of going to bed at nine o'clock.
Still you had put yourself out in vain; for, when you knocked at the
door of the parsonage, nobody came to open."

Here M. Magloire interrupted his colleague, saying,--

"So far, all is very well. But now there comes a very great
improbability. No one would think of going through the forest of
Rochepommier in order to return from Brechy to Boiscoran. If you knew
the country"--

"I know it; for I have carefully explored it. And the proof of it is,
that, having foreseen the objection, I have found an answer. While M. de
Boiscoran knocked at the door, a little peasant-girl passed by, and told
him that she had just met the priest at a place called the Marshalls'
Cross-roads. As the parsonage stands quite isolated, at the end of the
village, such an incident is very probable. As for the priest, chance
led me to learn this: precisely at the hour at which M. de Boiscoran
would have been at Brechy, a priest passed the Marshalls' Cross-roads;
and this priest, whom I have seen, belongs to the next parish. He also
dined at M. Besson's, and had just been sent for to attend a dying
woman. The little girl, therefore, did not tell a story; she only made a
mistake."

"Excellent!" said M. Magloire.

"Still," continued M. Folgat, "after this information, what did M. de
Boiscoran do? He went on; and, hoping every moment to meet the priest,
he walked as far as the forest of Rochepommier. Finding, at last, that
the peasant-girl had--purposely or not--led him astray, he determined to
return to Boiscoran through the woods. But he was in very bad humor
at having thus lost an evening which he might have spent with his
betrothed; and this made him swear and curse, as the witness Gaudry has
testified."

The famous lawyer