"Come, Roubaud," said M. Denizet, "you must not take us for children. So you pretend that you were jealous, and that it was in a transport of jealousy that you committed the murder?"
"Certainly," answered the other.
"And, if we admit what you relate," resumed the examining-magistrate, "you knew nothing about the intimacy of your wife with the President at the time you married her. Does that appear likely? In your case everything tends to prove, on the contrary, that the speculation was suggested to you, discussed, and accepted. You are given a young girl, brought up like a young lady, she receives a marriage portion, her protector becomes your protector, you know that he leaves you a country house in his will, and you pretend you had no suspicion, absolutely none at all! Get along with you. You knew everything, otherwise your marriage would be incomprehensible. Besides, the verification of one simple fact will suffice to confound you. You are not jealous. Dare to say again that you are jealous!"
"I say the truth," answered Roubaud. "I killed him in a fit of jealous rage."
"Then," said the examining-magistrate, "after killing the President, on account of an intimacy that dated back some time, which was of a vague nature and which for that matter you invent, explain to me how it was that you allowed your wife to have a sweetheart. Yes; that strapping fellow Jacques Lantier! Everybody has spoken to me about this acquaintance. You, yourself, have not attempted to conceal from me that you were aware of it. You freely allowed them to do what they pleased. Why?"
Roubaud, overcome and with troubled eyes, looked fixedly into space without finding an explanation, and ended by stammering:
"I do not know. I killed the other; I did not kill this one."
"Then," concluded the examining-magistrate, "do not tell me, again, that you are a jealous man who avenges himself. And I do not advise you to repeat this romance to the gentlemen of the jury, for they would only shrug their shoulders. Believe me, change your system. Truth alone can save you."
Henceforth, the more Roubaud stubbornly told this truth, the greater liar he was proved to be. Besides, everything went against him, and to such a point that his previous examination, on the occasion of the first inquiry in connection with the Grandmorin murder, which should have served to support his new version of the crime, because he had denounced Cabuche, became, on the contrary, the proof of a remarkably clever understanding between them.