“Ah, M. Magloire!” broke in Dionysia, “how can you, who are a friend of Jacques’s, say so?”
M. Magloire looked at the young girl with an air of deep and sincere pity, and then said,—
“It is precisely because I am his friend, madam, that I am bound to tell you the truth. Yes, I know and I appreciate all the noble qualities which distinguish M. de Boiscoran. I have loved him, and I love him still. But this is a matter which we have to look at with the mind, and not with the heart. Jacques is a man; and he will be judged by men. There is clear, public, and absolute evidence of his guilt on hand. What evidence has he to offer of his innocence? Moral evidence only.”
“O God!” murmured Dionysia.
“I think, therefore, with my honorable brother”—
And M. Magloire bowed to M. Folgat.
“I think, that, if M. de Boiscoran is innocent, he has adopted an unfortunate system. Ah! if luckily there should be an alibi. He ought to make haste, great haste, to establish it. He ought not to allow matters to go on till he is sent up into court. Once there, an accused is three-fourths condemned already.”
For once it looked as if the crimson in M. de Chandore’s cheeks was growing pale.
“And yet,” he exclaimed, “Jacques will not change his system: any one who knows his mulish obstinacy might be quite sure of that.”
“And unfortunately he has made up his mind,” said Dionysia, “as M. Magloire, who knows him so well, will see from this letter of his.”