Laurence, accepted, and the old man took her with Madame d’Hauteserre to his house, which became the home of the Cinq-Cygne household and the lawyers of the defence during the whole time the trial lasted. After dinner, when the doors were closed, Bordin made Laurence relate every circumstance of the affair, entreating her to omit nothing, not the most trifling detail. Though many of the facts had already been told to him and his young assistant by the marquis on their journey from Paris to Troyes, Bordin listened, his feet on the fender, without obtruding himself into the recital. The young lawyer, however, could not help being divided between his admiration for Mademoiselle de Cinq-Cygne, and the attention he was bound to give to the facts of his case. “Is that really all?” asked Bordin when Laurence had related the events of the drama just as the present narrative has given them up to the present time. “Yes,” she answered. Profound silence reigned for several minutes in the salon of the Chargeboeuf mansion where this scene took place,--one of the most important which occur in life. All cases are judged by the counsellors engaged in them, just as the death or life or a patient is foreseen by a physician, before the final struggle which the one sustains against nature, the other against law. Laurence, Monsieur and Madame d’Hauteserre, and the marquis sat with their eyes fixed on the swarthy and deeply pitted face of the old lawyer, who was now to pronounce the words of life or death. Monsieur d’Hauteserre wiped the sweat from his brow. Laurence looked at the younger man and noted his saddened face. “Well, my dear Bordin?” said the marquis at last, holding out his snuffbox, from which the old lawyer took a pinch in an absent-minded way. Bordin rubbed the calf of his leg, covered with thick stockings of black raw silk, for he always wore black cloth breeches and a coat made somewhat in the shape of those which are now termed _a la Francaise_. He cast his shrewd eyes upon his clients with an anxious expression, the effect of which was icy. “Must I analyze all that?” he said; “am I to speak frankly?” “Yes; go on, monsieur,” said Laurence.