“That is not your case.”
“Oh! how can you say such a thing?—I who would not harm a fly. Unlucky gun! Must I needs have such a mishap?”
The magistrate had for some time been looking at the accused with an air of the most profound disgust. He interrupted him rudely now, and said,—
“Look here, my man! Spare us those useless denials. Justice knows everything it wants to know. That shot was the third attempt you made to murder a man.”
Crochard drew back. He looked livid. But he had still the strength to say in a half-strangled voice,—
“That is false!”
But the magistrate had too great an abundance of evidence to allow the examination to continue. He said simply,—
“Who, then, threw, during the voyage, an enormous block at M. Champcey’s head? Come, don’t deny it. The emigrant who was near you, who saw you, and who promised he would not report you at that time, has spoken. Do you want to see him?”
Once more Crochard opened his lips to protest his innocence; but he could not utter a sound. He was crushed, annihilated; he trembled in all his limbs; and his teeth rattled in his mouth. In less than no time, his features had sunk in, as it were, till he looked like a man at the foot of the scaffold. It may be, that, feeling he was irretrievably lost, he had had a vision of the fatal instrument.
“Believe me,” continued the lawyer, “do not insist upon the impossible; you had better tell the truth.”