Besides, he had the sympathies of the men of his own class, who looked upon him as a victim, and even of some enviously disposed people of higher ranks in life.
Picot's expression was quite unmoved, although one could realise the fury, shame, and pride that were raging tumultuously in that massive frame.
No! Justice was not evenly dealt out to these two men, in the very fact of their being treated alike.
Next day there was another ceremony quite as lugubrious—they proceeded to exhume the body.
Most discussion took place over the bruised wound in the youth's chest. The shepherd contended that it had been caused by the horse's kick. Picot retorted that if it had been bruised by a kick from a horse and from one leg only, violent enough to make him faint away, the marks of the shoe would be imprinted on the chest, which, although bruised, was more probably marked by the clogs of the shepherd than by the horse's shoe. They were both sent to the prison at Soissons, and at the end of a month Picot was given his liberty on the grounds of there being insufficient evidence against him.
He returned to his people; but the blow had been violent enough to spoil his future life. He had been proud before, but now he became misanthropic; he shut himself up on his property at home, avoided all assemblies of young people of his own age, and ended by marrying the daughter of a policeman, who had been his mistress for some time.
Doubtless—as there is compensation in the end for all unmerited misfortune—Providence had led him by dark paths into simpler and happier ways. He had one real joy,—perhaps the deepest joy of this world,—his father and his poor mother, to whom he was devotedly attached, died near him at an extreme old age.
The shepherd was sentenced to twelve or fifteen years' imprisonment, I think, for having stolen the clothes found on a dead man.
A strange sentence, which established the fact that a crime had been committed without pointing out a culprit!