After that there was nothing left for M. Galpin but to go away. He did go in a fury, but at the same time determined to profit by the rude truths which M. Daubigeon had told him; for he knew very well that his friend represented in his views nearly the whole community. He was fully prepared to carry out his plan. Immediately after his return, he communicated the papers of the prosecution to the defence, and directed his clerk to show himself as obliging as he could. M. Mechinet was not a little surprised at these orders. He knew his master thoroughly,--this magistrate, whose shadow he had been now for so many years. “You are afraid, dear sir,” he had said to himself. And as M. Galpin repeated the injunction, adding that the honor of justice required the utmost courtesy when rigor was not to be employed, the old clerk replied very gravely,-- “Oh! be reassured, sir. I shall not be wanting in courtesy.” But, as soon as the magistrate turned his back, Mechinet laughed aloud. “He would not recommend me to be obliging,” he thought, “if he suspected the truth, and knew how far I am devoted to the defence. What a fury he would be in, if he should ever find out that I have betrayed all the secrets of the investigation, that I have carried letters to and from the prisoner, that I have made of Trumence an accomplice, and of Blangin the jailer an agent, that I have helped Miss Dionysia to visit her betrothed in jail!” For he had done all this four times more than enough to be dismissed from his place, and even to become, at least for some months, one of Blangin’s boarders. He shivered all down his back when he thought of this; and he had been furiously angry, when, one evening, his sisters, the devout seamstresses, had taken it into their heads to say to him,-- “Certainly, Mechinet, you are a different man ever since that visit of Miss Chandore.” “Abominable talkers!” he had exclaimed, in a tone of voice which frightened them out of their wits. “Do you want to see me hanged?” But, if he had these attacks of rage, he felt not a moment’s remorse. Miss Dionysia had completely bewitched him; and he judged M. Galpin’s conduct as severely as she did. To be sure, M. Galpin had done nothing contrary to law; but he had violated the spirit of the law. Having once summoned courage to begin proceedings against his friend, he had not been able to remain impartial. Afraid of being charged with timidity, he had exaggerated his severity. And, above all, he had carried on the inquiry solely in the interests of a conviction, as if the crime had been proved, and the prisoner had not protested his innocence. Now, Mechinet firmly believed in this innocence; and he was fully persuaded that the day on which Jacques de Boiscoran saw his counsel would be the day of his justification. This will show with what eagerness he went to the court-house to wait for M. Magloire. But at noon the great lawyer had not yet come. He was still consulting with M. de Chandore.