Five minutes later, the usher introduced M. Noel Gerdy. He entered with an easy manner, like an advocate who was well acquainted with the Palais, and who knew its winding ways. He in no wise resembled, this morning, old Tabaret’s friend; still less could he have been recognized as Madame Juliette’s lover. He was entirely another being, or rather he had resumed his every-day bearing. From his firm step, his placid face, one would never imagine that, after an evening of emotion and excitement, after a secret visit to his mistress, he had passed the night by the pillow of a dying woman, and that woman his mother, or at least one who had filled his mother’s place.
What a contrast between him and the magistrate!
M. Daburon had not slept either: but one could easily see that in his feebleness, in his anxious look, in the dark circles about his eyes. His shirt-front was all rumpled, and his cuffs were far from clean. Carried away by the course of events, the mind had forgotten the body. Noel’s well-shaved chin, on the contrary, rested upon an irreproachably white cravat; his collar did not show a crease; his hair and his whiskers had been most carefully brushed. He bowed to M. Daburon, and held out the summons he had received.
“You summoned me, sir,” he said; “and I am here awaiting your orders.”
The investigating magistrate had met the young advocate several times in the lobbies of the Palais; and he knew him well by sight. He remembered having heard M. Gerdy spoken of as a man of talent and promise, whose reputation was fast rising. He therefore welcomed him as a fellow-workman, and invited him to be seated.
The preliminaries common in the examinations of all witnesses ended; the name, surname, age, place of business, and so on having been written down, the magistrate, who had followed his clerk with his eyes while he was writing, turned towards Noel.
“I presume you know, M. Gerdy,” he began, “the matters in connection with which you are troubled with appearing before me?”
“Yes, sir, the murder of that poor old woman at La Jonchere.”
“Precisely,” replied M. Daburon. Then, calling to mind his promise to old Tabaret, he added, “If justice has summoned you so promptly, it is because we have found your name often mentioned in Widow Lerouge’s papers.”
“I am not surprised at that,” replied the advocate: “we were greatly interested in that poor woman, who was my nurse; and I know that Madame Gerdy wrote to her frequently.”