Of course this duel was not fought without considerable intervention on the part of President Gragnon, who thought the opportunity favourable to silence Delbos, on the ground that he addressed insulting questions to the Brother. Delbos retorted by submitting 'conclusions,' and there was quite a to-do, amidst which Brother Gorgias seemed triumphant, turning on the advocate sly glances of disdain, as if to imply that he feared nothing whatever, protected as he was by his God of anger and extermination, who proved so terrible to infidels. But if the incident yielded no result that Delbos could immediately put to use, it wrought great perturbation; and some folk felt terribly alarmed lest Simon should escape as the result of such attempts to cast doubt into the minds of the jurors. That alarm must have spread to the Congregations, for a fresh incident occurred after the evidence of the handwriting experts, Masters Badoche and Trabut, who, amidst general stupefaction, explained how they detected Simon's initials, an E and an S interlaced, in the paraph on the copy-slip, when nobody else could see them there. That copy-slip was the one document in the case, everything depended on it; thus the evidence of those extraordinary experts was extremely grave: it meant the condemnation of Simon. It was then that Father Philibin, who had followed the proceedings most attentively, asked the judge's permission to return to the bar. There, in a ringing voice, he, who had first shown himself so spiritless and retiring, recounted a brief story of a certain letter he had seen--a letter written by Simon to a friend, and signed with the same flourishes. And when Gragnon pressed him, asked for precise particulars, the Jesuit raised his hand towards the picture of the Crucifixion above the judgment seat, and declared theatrically that it was a secret of the confessional, and that he would say no more. Thus the second day's proceedings came to an end amid a paroxysm of feverishness and tumult.