“Yes, that is his fur trimming, sure enough!—But it has worn gray, Monsieur Vautrin,” cried Madame Poiret.
“What have you to say to that?” asked the judge of the prisoner.
“That she is mad,” replied Jacques Collin.
“Bless me! If I had a doubt—for his face is altered—that voice would be enough. He is the man who threatened me. Ah! and those are his eyes!”
“The police agent and this woman,” said Camusot, speaking to Jacques Collin, “cannot possibly have conspired to say the same thing, for neither of them had seen you till now. How do you account for that?”
“Justice has blundered more conspicuously even than it does now in accepting the evidence of a woman who recognizes a man by the hair on his chest and the suspicions of a police agent,” replied Jacques Collin. “I am said to resemble a great criminal in voice, eyes, and build; that seems a little vague. As to the memory which would prove certain relations between Madame and my Sosie—which she does not blush to own—you yourself laughed at. Allow me, monsieur, in the interests of truth, which I am far more anxious to establish for my own sake than you can be for the sake of justice, to ask this lady—Madame Foiret——”
“Poiret.”
“Poret—excuse me, I am a Spaniard—whether she remembers the other persons who lived in this—what did you call the house?”
“A boarding-house,” said Madame Poiret.
“I do not know what that is.”