“What is your opinion?”
“Ah! do I know it myself? I have lost my head: the whole thing looks to me like a nightmare.”
“You cannot really believe that M. de Boiscoran is guilty?”
“I believe nothing. My reason tells me he is innocent. I feel he must be innocent; and yet I see terrible evidence rising against him.”
The attorney was overwhelmed.
“Alas!” he said, “why did you, contrary to everybody’s opinion, insist upon examining Cocoleu, a poor idiotic wretch?”
But the magistrate remonstrated—
“You do not mean to reproach me, sir, for having followed the impulses of my conscience?”
“I reproach you for nothing.”
“A horrible crime has been committed; and my duty compelled me to do all that lies in the power of man to discover the culprit.”