[CHAPTER IV]
One day, during the second week in March, M. Denizet, the examining-magistrate, had again summoned certain important witnesses in the Grandmorin case, to his chambers at the Rouen Law Courts.
For the last three weeks, this case had been causing enormous sensation. It had set Rouen upside down; it had impassioned Paris; and the opposition newspapers, in their violent campaign against the Empire, had just grasped it as a weapon. The forthcoming general elections, which occupied the public mind in preference to all other political events, added keen excitement to the struggle. In the Chamber there had been some very stormy sittings; one at which the validity of the powers of two members attached to the Emperor's household, had been bitterly disputed; and another that had given rise to a most determined attack on the financial administration of the Prefect of the Seine, coupled with a demand for the election of a Municipal Council.
The Grandmorin case, coming at an appropriate moment, served to keep up the agitation. The most extraordinary stories were abroad. Every morning, the newspapers were full of assumptions injurious for the Government. On the one hand, the public were given to understand that the victim—a familiar figure at the Tuileries, formerly on the bench, Commander of the Legion of Honour, immensely rich—was addicted to the most frightful debauchery; on the other, the inquiry into the case, having so far proved fruitless, they began to accuse the police and legal authorities, of winking at the affair, and joked about the legendary assassin who could not be found. If there was a good deal of truth in these attacks, they were all the harder to bear.
M. Denizet was fully alive to his heavy responsibility. He, also, became impassioned with the case, and the more so as he was ambitious, and had been burning to have a matter of this importance in his hands, so as to bring into evidence the high qualities of perspicacity and energy with which he credited himself.
The son of a large Normandy cattle-breeder, he had studied law at Caen, but had entered the judicial department of the Government rather late in life; and, his peasant origin, aggravated by his father's bankruptcy, had made his promotion slow. Substitute at Bernay, Dieppe, and Havre, it had taken him ten years to become Imperial Procurator at Pont-Audemer; then, sent to Rouen as substitute, he had been acting as examining-magistrate for eighteen months, and was over fifty years of age.
Without any fortune, a prey to requirements that could not be satisfied out of his meagre salary, he lived in this ill-remunerated dependence of the magistracy, only frankly accepted by men of mediocre capacity, and where the intelligent are eaten up with envy, whilst on the look-out for an opportunity to sell themselves.
M. Denizet was a man of the most lively intelligence, with a very penetrating mind. He was even honest, and fond of his profession, intoxicated with his great power which, in his justice-room, made him absolute master of the liberty of others. It was his interests alone that kept his zeal within bounds. He had such a burning desire to be decorated and transferred to Paris, that, after having at the commencement of the inquiry, allowed himself to be carried away by his love of truth, he now proceeded with extreme prudence, perceiving pitfalls on all sides, which might swallow up his future.