“They came in and ordered what they wanted; you waited on them, and then left them to themselves?”
“Yes, my good sir.”
“It seems to me impossible that you didn’t overhear some words of their conversation. What were they talking about?”
“I am not in the habit of playing spy over my customers.”
“Didn’t you hear anything?”
“Nothing at all.”
The magistrate shrugged his shoulders with an air of commiseration. “In other words,” he remarked, “you refuse to inform justice—”
“Oh, my good sir!”
“Allow me to finish. All these improbable stories about leaving the shop and mending your son’s clothes in your bedroom are so many inventions. You have concocted them so as to be able to say to me: ‘I didn’t see anything; I didn’t hear anything.’ If such is your system of defense, I warn you that it will be impossible for you to maintain it, and I may add that it would not be admitted by any tribunal.”
“It is not a system of defense; it is the truth.”