“Let us go. The wretch is worse than a brute.”
“Was he any better,” asked the doctor, “when he denounced M. de Boiscoran?”
But the magistrate pretended not to hear; and, when they were about to leave the room, he said to the doctor,—
“You know that I expect your report, doctor?”
“In forty-eight hours I shall have the honor to hand it to you,” replied the latter.
But as he went off, he said half aloud,—
“And that report is going to give you some trouble, my good man.”
The report was ready then, and his reason for not giving it in, was that he thought, the longer he could delay it, the more chance he would probably have to defeat the plan of the prosecution.
“As I mean to keep it two days longer,” he thought on his way home, “why should I not show it to this Paris lawyer who has come down with the marchioness? Nothing can prevent me, as far as I see, since that poor Galpin, in his utter confusion, has forgotten to put me under oath.”
But he paused. According to the laws of medical jurisprudence, had he the right, or not, to communicate a paper belonging to the case to the counsel of the accused? This question troubled him; for, although he boasted that he did not believe in God, he believed firmly in professional duty, and would have allowed himself to be cut in pieces rather than break its laws.