th the strength of a Hercules, having abandoned
all the tricks he had aped so well on appearing before the magistrate.

"Monsieur!"

Jacques Collin turned round.

"Notwithstanding your refusal to sign the document, my clerk will read
you the minutes of your examination."

The prisoner was evidently in excellent health; the readiness with
which he came back, and sat down by the clerk, was a fresh light to the
magistrate's mind.

"You have got well very suddenly!" said Camusot.

"Caught!" thought Jacques Collin; and he replied:

"Joy, monsieur, is the only panacea.--That letter, the proof of
innocence of which I had no doubt--these are the grand remedy."

The judge kept a meditative eye on the prisoner when the usher and the
gendarmes again took him in charge. Then, with a start like a waking
man, he tossed Esther's letter across to the table where his clerk sat,
saying:

"Coquart, copy that letter."

If it is natural to man to be suspicious as to some favor required of
him when it is antagonistic to his interests or his duty, and sometimes
even when it is a matter of indifference, this feeling is law to an
examining magistrate. The more this prisoner--whose identity was not yet
ascertained--pointed to clouds on the horizon in the event of Lucien's
being examined, the more necessary did the interrogatory seem to
Camusot. Even if this formality had not been required by the Code and by
common practice, it was indispensable as bearing on the identification
of the Abbe Carlos. There is in every walk of life the business
conscience. In default of curiosity Camusot would have examined Lucien
as he had examined Jacques Collin, with all the cunning which the most
honest magistrate allows himself to use in such cases. The services he
might render and his own promotion were secondary in Camusot's mind to
his anxiety to know or guess the truth, even if he should never tell it.

He stood drumming on the window-pane while following the river-like
current of his conjectures, for in these moods thought is like a stream
flowing through many countries. Magistrates, in love with truth, are
like jealous women; they give way to a thousand hypotheses, and probe
them with the dagger-point of suspicion, as the sacrificing priest of
old eviscerated his victims; thus they arrive, not perhaps at truth,
but at probability, and at last see the truth beyond. A woman
cross-questions the man she loves as the judge cross-questions a
crimin