Policemen were constantly coming and going with prisoners. Sometimes, above the noise of their heavy boots, tramping along the flagstones, could be heard a woman’s stifled sobs, and looking around you would see some poor mother or wife with her face buried in her handkerchief, weeping bitterly.
At short intervals a door would open and shut, and a bailiff call out a name or number.
This stifling atmosphere, and the sight of so much misery, made the cashier ill and faint; he was feeling as if another five minutes’ stay among these wretched creatures would make him deathly sick, when a little old man dressed in black, wearing the insignia of his office, a steel chain, cried out:
“Prosper Bertomy!”
The unhappy man arose, and, without knowing how, found himself in the office of the judge of instruction.
For a moment he was blinded. He had come out of a dark room; and the one in which he now found himself had a window directly opposite the door, so that a flood of light fell suddenly upon him.
This office, like all those on the gallery, was of a very ordinary appearance, small and dingy.
The wall was covered with cheap dark green paper, and on the floor was a hideous brown carpet, very much worn.
Opposite the door was a large desk, filled with bundles of law-papers, behind which was seated the judge, facing those who entered, so that his face remained in the shade, while that of the prisoner or witness whom he questioned was in a glare of light.
At the right, before a little table, sat a clerk writing, the indispensable auxiliary of the judge.