In ten years Advocate Delbos had risen to a remarkable position at Maillebois. The Simon affair, that compromising case, the brief in which had been prudently declined by all his colleagues and bravely accepted by himself, had decided his future. At that time he had been merely a peasant's son, imbued with some democratic instincts and gifted with eloquence. But, while studying the affair and gradually becoming the impassioned defender of the truth, he had found himself in presence of all the _bourgeois_ forces coalescing in favour of falsehood and the maintenance of every social iniquity. And this had ended by making him a militant Socialist, one who felt convinced that the salvation of the country could come solely from the masses. By degrees the whole revolutionary party of the town had grouped itself around him, and at the last elections he had forced a second ballot on the radical Lemarrois, who had been deputy for twenty years. And if Delbos still suffered in his immediate interests from the circumstance that he had defended a Jew charged with every crime, he was gradually rising to a lofty position by the firmness of his faith and the quiet valour of his actions, going forward to victory with gay and virile confidence. As soon as Marc had shown him the copy-slip obtained from Madame Alexandre, the advocate raised a loud cry of delight: 'At last we hold them!' And turning towards David he added: 'This gives us a second new fact. The first is the letter--a forgery, no doubt--which was illegally communicated to the jury.... We must try to find it among the papers of the case.... And the second is this copy-slip, bearing the stamp of the Brothers' school, and a paraph which is evidently that of Brother Gorgias. It will, I think, be easier and more effective to use this second proof.' 'Then what do you advise me to do?' asked David. 'My idea is to write a letter to the Minister of Justice on behalf of my sister-in-law, a letter formally denouncing Brother Gorgias as the perpetrator of the crime, and applying for the revision of my brother's case.'