“Yes,” added the other old lady, “if all Sauveterre thinks Jacques guilty, let them also say, ‘His own friend has become his judge.’” M. Folgat shook his head, and said,-- “I must have more minute information. The marquis mentioned to me a M. Seneschal, mayor of Sauveterre.” M. de Chandore looked at once for his hat, and said,-- “To be sure! He is a friend of ours; and, if any one is well informed, he is. Let us go to him. Come.” M. Seneschal was indeed a friend of the Chandores, the Lavarandes, and also of the Boiscorans. Although he was a lawyer he had become attached to the people whose confidential adviser he had been for more than twenty years. Even after having retired from business, M. Seneschal had still retained the full confidence of his former clients. They never decided on any grave question, without consulting him first. His successor did the business for them; but M. Seneschal directed what was to be done. Nor was the assistance all on one side. The example of great people like M. de Chandore and Jacques’s uncle had brought many a peasant on business into M. Seneschal’s office; and when he was, at a later period of his life, attacked by the fever of political ambition, and offered to “sacrifice himself for his country” by becoming mayor of Sauveterre, and a member of the general council, their support had been of great service to him. Hence he was well-nigh overcome when he returned, on that fatal morning, to Sauveterre. He looked so pale and undone, that his wife was seriously troubled. “Great God, Augustus! What has happened?” she asked. “Something terrible has happened,” he replied in so tragic a manner, that his wife began to tremble. To be sure, Mrs. Seneschal trembled very easily. She was a woman of forty-five or fifty years, very dark, short, and fat, trying hard to breathe in the corsets which were specially made for her by the Misses Mechinet, the clerk’s sisters. When she was young, she had been rather pretty: now she still kept the red cheeks of her younger days, a forest of jet black hair, and excellent teeth. But she was not happy. Her life had been spent in wishing for children, and she had none.