"Is there no communication between the kitchen and the entry?"
"The door was closed."
A flood of words rushed to his lips, to protest against the conclusions which seemed to follow these answers, but he kept them back. He saw himself caught in a net, and all his efforts to free himself only bound him more strongly.
As he was asked no more questions it seemed to him best to say nothing, and he was silent a long time, of the duration of which he was only vaguely conscious.
The judge talked in a low tone, the recorder wrote rapidly, and he heard only a monotonous murmur that interrupted the scratching of a pen on the paper.
"Your testimony will now be read to you," the judge said.
He wished to give all his attention to this reading, but he soon lost the thread of it. The impression it made upon him, however, was that it faithfully reproduced all that he had said, and he signed it.
"Now," said the judge, "my duty obliges me, in presence of the charges which emanate from your testimony, to deliver against you a 'manda depot'."
Florentin received this blow without flinching.
"I know," he said, "that all the protestations I might make would have no effect at this moment; I therefore spare you them. But I have a favor to ask of you; it is to permit me to write to my mother and sister the news of my arrest—they love me tenderly. Oh, you shall read my letter!"