"Oh, well! Jacques Dantin," and the Magistrate's voice was grave and suddenly solemn. "You are from this moment arrested." The pen, uplifted till this instant, fell upon the paper. It was an order for arrest. The registrar looked at the man. Jacques Dantin did not move. His expression seemed vague, the fixed expression of a person who dreams with wide-open eyes. M. Ginory touched one of the electric buttons above his table and pointed Dantin out to the guards, whose shakos suddenly darkened the doorway. "Take away the prisoner," he said shortly and mechanically, and, overcome, without revolt, Jacques Dantin allowed himself to be led through the corridors of the Palais, saying nothing, comprehending nothing, stumbling occasionally, like an intoxicated man or a somnambulist. CHAPTER XI. M. BERNARDET was triumphant. He went home to dinner in a jubilant mood. His three little girls, dressed alike, clasped him round the neck, all at the same time, while Mme. Bernardet, always fresh, smiling and gay, held up her face with its soft, round, rosy cheeks to him. "My little ones," said the officer, "I believe that I have done well, and that my chief will advance me or give me some acknowledgment. I will buy you some bracelets, my dears, if that happens. But it is not the idea of filthy lucre which has urged me on, and I believe that I have certainly made a great stride in judiciary instruction, all owing to my kodak. It would be too long an explanation and, perhaps, a perfectly useless one. Let us go to dinner. I am as hungry as a wolf." He ate, truly, with a good appetite, scarcely stopped to tell how the assassin was under lock and key. The man had been measured and had become a number in the collection, always increasing, of accused persons in the catalogue continued each day for the Museum of Crime. "Ah! He is not happy," said Bernardet between two spoonfuls of soup. "Not happy, not happy at all! Not happy, and astonished--protesting, moreover, his innocence, as they all do. It is customary." "But," sweetly asked good little Mme. Bernardet, "what if he is innocent?" And the three little girls, raising their heads, looked at their father, as if to repeat their mother's question. The eldest murmured: "Yes, what if mamma is right?" Bernardet shrugged his shoulders. "To hear them, if one listened to them, one would believe them all innocent, and the crimes would have to commit themselves. If this one is innocent I shall be astonished, as if I should see snow fall in Paris in June; he will have to prove that he is innocent. These things prove themselves. Give me some more soup, Mélanie."