“Never mind!” he exclaimed in the most arrogant manner. “It is anyhow pretty hard to accuse an honest man of a crime, because his voice resembles the voice of a rascal.”
The magistrate gently shook his head. He said,—
“Do you pretend being an honest man?”
“What! I pretend? Let them send for my employers.”
“That is not necessary. I know your antecedents, from the first petty theft that procured you four months’ imprisonment, to the aggravated robbery for which you were sent to the penitentiary, when you were in the army.”
Profound stupor lengthened all of Crochard’s features; but he was not the man to give up a game in which his head was at stake, without fighting for it.
“Well, there you are mistaken,” he said very coolly. “I have been condemned to ten years, that is true, when I was a soldier; but it was for having struck an officer who had punished me unjustly.”
“You lie. A former soldier of your regiment, who is now in garrison here in Saigon, will prove it.”
For the first time the accused seemed to be really troubled. He saw all of a sudden his past rising before him, which until now he had thought unknown or forgotten; and he knew full well the weight which antecedents like his would have in the scales of justice. So he changed his tactics; and, assuming an abject humility, he said,—
“One may have committed a fault, and still be incapable of murdering a man.”