Finally, another of the Brothers' former pupils, Polydor Souquet, now a servant in a Beaumont convent, appeared at the bar, and was questioned very pressingly by Delbos respecting the manner in which Brother Gorgias had escorted him home on the night of the crime, the incidents which had occurred on the road, the words that had been exchanged, and the hour. But all that Delbos could extract from Polydor were some evasive answers, and malicious glances promptly tempered by an affectation of stupidity. How could one remember after so many years? the witness asked. The excuse was too convenient, and the Procureur de la République began to show signs of anxious impatience, while the onlookers, though they failed to understand why the advocate insisted so much with an apparently insignificant witness, felt as it were a quiver of the truth passing through the atmosphere—the truth suspected, but once more taking flight.
People were stirred again at the next sitting of the Court, though it began with the interminable demonstrations of the experts, Masters Badoche and Trabut, who, disregarding even the admissions of Brother Gorgias himself, obstinately refused to recognise his initials, an F and a G, in the incriminated paraph, in which they alone recognised those of Simon, an E and an S interlaced, but, it was true, illegible. For more than three hours these men piled argument upon argument, demonstration on demonstration, calmly persevering in their lunacy. And the marvel was that the presiding judge allowed them to go on, and listened to them with manifest complacency, while the Procureur made a show of taking notes, and asked the experts for precise information on certain points, as if the prosecution still adopted their system. In presence of this mise-en-scène, even reasonable people in the hall began to hesitate. And, after all, why not? For in matters of handwriting one could never tell.
But at the close of the sitting an incident, which did not last ten minutes, upset everybody. Clad in black from head to foot, ex-investigating Magistrate Daix, who had been cited by the defence, appeared at the bar. He was scarcely fifty-six years old, but he looked seventy; thin and bent, his hair quite white, his face so emaciated that little of it, save the slender, blade-like nose, seemed to remain. He had lately lost his wife, and people talked of the torturing life which that ugly, coquettish, ambitious woman had led him in her despair that nothing ever raised them from their narrow circumstances, not even the condemnation of that Jew Simon, on which she had insisted and from which she had hoped to derive so much. And now that his wife was no longer beside him, Daix, timid and anxious, painstaking in his profession, an honest man at heart, had come there to relieve his conscience, distracted as he was by the deeds which had been wrung from his weakness, his craving to have peace at home. He did not positively speak of all those things, he did not even admit that after his investigations he had felt that the only possible decision was an order to stay further proceedings. But he allowed Delbos to question him, and when his present opinion was asked, he replied plainly that the inquiry of the Court of Cassation had destroyed his work, the original indictment, and that for his own part he now regarded Simon as innocent. Then he withdrew amidst the silent stupefaction of the onlookers. The apparition of that man in mourning garb, the admissions made by him in slow and sorrowful accents, had stirred every heart.
That evening, in Marc's large room, where Simon's friends met after every sitting of the Court in order to discuss matters, Delbos and David expressed keen satisfaction, a conviction that success was almost certain now, so great, apparently, was the impression which Daix's evidence had produced on the jury. Nevertheless, Marc remained anxious. He told the others of certain rumours which were circulating concerning the stealthy doings of ex-President Gragnon, who had been carrying on a subterranean campaign ever since his arrival at Rozan. Marc was aware that, even as the friends of the defence met in his own room, in like way mysterious meetings took place every night at Gragnon's in an adjoining street. And there the partisans of the prosecution certainly decided on the line they would pursue on the morrow, invented the answers which it would be best to give, planned the incidents which they felt ought to be raised, in particular preparing the evidence in accordance with the result of the day's sitting. For instance, whenever that sitting was regarded as unfavourable to the prosecution, one might be sure that there would be some surprise detrimental to the prisoner, at the outset of the sitting on the morrow. Moreover, Father Crabot had been again seen slipping into Gragnon's house. Several people also declared that they had seen young Polydor Souquet leaving it. And others alleged that at a very late hour they had met in the street a lady and a gentleman who looked extremely like Mademoiselle Rouzaire and Inspector Mauraisin. But the worst was some mysterious work, which centred round those jurors who were notoriously on the side of the Church, and of which Marc obtained an inkling, though his informant could not give him full particulars. Gragnon did not commit such a blunder as to ask those men to call at his house, nor did he, indeed, address himself to them personally; but he made others call on them, and show them, so it was said, an irrefutable proof of Simon's guilt, a terrible document, which the most serious reasons prevented him from making public, though he was resolved to employ it, all the same, should the defence drive him to extremities. And this information made Marc feel anxious, for he scented some fresh abomination in it. Thus, on the evening of the day when Daix had dealt the prosecution such a severe blow, he predicted to his friends some deed of retaliation on the enemy's part, some sample of the thunder which Gragnon, according to his own account, had in his pocket.
The following sitting of the Court was, indeed, one of the gravest and most exciting. Jacquin, the foreman of the first jury, in his turn came forward to relieve his conscience. In simple language he related how President Gragnon, on being summoned by the jurors, who had wished to consult him respecting the penalty attaching to their verdict, had entered their room carrying a letter, and looking very much disturbed. And he had shown them that letter, which bore Simon's signature, followed by a postscriptum and a paraph, which last was identical with the one on the copy-slip tendered as evidence. Several jurymen, who had hesitated previously, then declared themselves convinced of the prisoner's guilt. He, Jacquin, had retained no further doubts; and for the peace of his conscience he had been well pleased at thus acquiring certainty. At that time he had not known that such a communication was illegal. It was only later that he had discovered such to be the case, and had experienced great distress of mind until, at last, the postscriptum and the paraph being recognised as forgeries, he had resolved, like a good Christian, to make amends for his involuntary error. A shudder of awe sped through those who heard him, when in his quiet way he added a last detail: He had heard the very voice of Jesus telling him to speak out, one evening when, tortured by remorse, he was kneeling in a dim chapel of St. Maxence.
Then Gragnon was summoned to the bar, and at first tried the effect of the rough frankness which he had so often assumed in his browbeating judicial days. He was still fat, though his fears had made him pale; and, striving to hide his prolonged anguish beneath the impudence of a bon vivant, he pretended that he no longer remembered petty details. And well—yes, he believed he had gone into the jurors' room carrying the letter which he had just received. He had been upset by it, and had shown it to the others in a moment of emotion, scarcely realising the nature of his action, and being only desirous of establishing the truth. He had never regretted that communication, so fully was he convinced of the authenticity of the postscript and the paraph. In his opinion the assertion that they were forgeries remained to be proved. Then, as he formally charged Jacquin with having read the letter aloud to the other jurors, and of having commented on it, the ex-foreman was recalled, and a sharp dispute ensued. At last Gragnon convicted the architect of some error or forgetfulness respecting the perusal of the letter; and thereupon he triumphed while the spectators began to hiss the honest witness, who from that moment was suspected of having sold himself to the Jews.
In vain did Delbos repeatedly intervene, striving to exasperate Gragnon and unmask him, by forcing him to an explosion, the production of the famous document which it was said would clench everything. The ex-judge, who retained all his self-possession, and who was satisfied with having escaped immediate danger by casting a doubt on his adversary's veracity, relapsed into evasive answers. It was noticed, however, that one of the jurors caused a question to be put to him—a question which nobody understood, but which was whether he did not possess some knowledge of another document bearing on the authenticity of the copy-slip. Gragnon answered enigmatically, that he abided by his previous declarations, and was unwilling to enter into other matters, however certain they might be. And thus that sitting of the Court, which, at the outset, had seemed likely to ruin the prosecution, ended to its advantage. In Marc's room in the evening, Simon's friends again began to despair.
The examination of the witnesses dragged on during a few more sittings. The doctor appointed to visit Brother Fulgence had returned with a report that the Brother's condition was very serious, and that it was impossible to bring him to Rozan. In like manner Father Crabot avoided the embarrassment of attendance by feigning a sudden accident—a severe sprain. In vain did Delbos make an application for his evidence to be taken by commission. President Guybaraud, who at the outset had shown himself so phlegmatic, now sabred everybody and everything in his eagerness to bring the case to an end. He treated Simon harshly, as if, indeed, he were already a condemned man; being emboldened to this course by the singular calmness of the prisoner, who still listened to the witnesses with curiosity and stupefaction, as if the extraordinary adventures of somebody else were being recounted to him. Only on two or three occasions did some extremely mendacious testimony prompt him to a little rebellion; for the most part he contented himself with smiling and shrugging his shoulders.
At last Pacart, the Procureur de la République, addressed the Court. Tall and thin, he was addicted to long, nervous gestures, and affected an unadorned, mathematically precise kind of eloquence. In presence of the plainly-worded judgment of the Court of Cassation, his task was not easy. But his tactics were very simple, he took no account of that judgment, he did not once allude to the long inquiry which had ended in a decision to send the affair for trial by another Assize Court. He quietly reverted to the old indictment, based himself on the report of the experts, and accepted the revised account of the copy-slip, holding that the school-stamp as well as the initialling had been forged. He even spoke of that stamp in a positive way, as if he held a proof that it had been forged but could not produce it. As for Brother Gorgias, he regarded him simply as an unfortunate man, perhaps mentally unhinged, assuredly in need, and of a passionate nature—one who, after proving an undisciplined and compromising son of the Church, had quitted it and sold himself to the Jews. And Pacart concluded by asking the jurors to put an end to this affair, which was so disastrous for the peace of the country, by saying once more on which side the culprit really was, whether among the Anarchists and the Cosmopolites—who sought to destroy all belief in God and country—or among the men upholding faith, respect, and tradition, to whom, for ages past, France had owed her grandeur.