“Well,” said M. Daubigeon, “what do you think of that?”
M. Galpin was dumfounded.
“It is enough to make one mad,” he murmured.
“Do you begin to see how that M. Folgat was right when he said the case was far from being so clear as you pretended?”
“Ah! who would not have been deceived as I was? You yourself, at one time at least, were of my opinion. And yet, if the Countess Claudieuse and M. de Boiscoran are both innocent, who is the guilty one?”
“That is what we shall know very soon; for I am determined I will not allow myself a moment’s rest till I have found out the truth of the whole matter. How fortunate it was that this fatal error in form should have made the sentence null and void!”
He was so much excited, that he forgot his never-failing quotations. Turning to the clerk, he said,—
“But we must not lose a minute. Put your legs into active motion, my dear Mechinet, and run and ask M. Folgat to come here. I will wait for him here.”
III.
When Dionysia, after leaving the Countess Claudieuse, came back to Jacques’s parents and his friends, she said, radiant with hope,—