“I ask nothing better,” cried a stentorian voice, from the middle of the auditorium, and through the crowd pushed M. Couard, carrying a large package.
“I do not wish it to be said,” he shouted, “that I have not the profoundest respect for my old teacher. But what is the Ecole des Chartes? The Ecole des Chartes, I know it. I have been through it. Do they teach anything there about the handwriting of the nineteenth century? The fifteenth, the sixteenth, I even grant you the seventeenth and eighteenth, if you please; but contemporary handwriting? Why, there is not a single chair of modern handwriting there. I revere M. Meyer as a professor of Roman philology, but as an expert in handwriting he is like a child just born. Why, I was present at the development of a thesis on the famous flag of Jeanne Hachette, which is preserved at Beauvais. The candidate had deciphered upon it all sorts of interesting fifteenth-century inscriptions. I twisted with laughter. His description was based upon a flag manufactured in 1840 to replace the true one, which is worm-eaten, and of which nothing is left but shreds, upon which it is impossible to read anything. ‘Each one to his trade, then the cows will be well kept.’”
M. Meyer.—“If there is no instruction in writings at the Ecole des Chartes, where did you get your instruction, Monsieur Expert?”
M. Couard.—“By practice, my dear master,—practice for eight years.”
M. Meyer.—“Pardon me, I do not defend myself. Pupils are always the best judges of their professors.”
M. Labori.—“What is the package, so preciously wrapped, that you have there under the table? Does it contain, perchance, photographs of the bordereau?”
M. Couard.—“No, it is the famous dissertation upon the flag of Jeanne Hachette. I see what you are after. You wish to turn the course of my testimony. But it is established, nevertheless, that my old teacher is only an expert on occasion.”
Testimony of M. Paul Moriaud.
The next witness was M. Paul Moriaud, professor in the Geneva law school. He desired to use a blackboard for his demonstrations, as M. Franck had done the day before, but the court refused to permit him to do so. After declaring that there were never two handwritings so nearly identical as that of Esterhazy and that of the bordereau, he discussed the question whether the bordereau was produced by tracing.
“Tracing,” said the witness, “can be done in two ways. There is first the tracing of entire words separately. Suppose you desired to produce this phrase: ‘You are right, Monsieur,’ signed ‘So and So.’ You procure a specimen of the writing of M. So and So, and you look for the word ‘are,’ the word ‘right,’ etc. You paste them side by side, you cut out the signature and paste it beneath, and you photograph the whole; or else you trace them. In this case we may suppose tracing, for the bordereau is on tracing-paper. Here you have 181 words, almost all different. There are rare words among them,—Madagascar, check, hydraulic, indicating, etc. Well, if you should collect Major Esterhazy’s letters for ten years, and try to find in them all the words that are in this bordereau, you would not succeed. The process is an utter impossibility.