“Very good. Jacques Collin has just now been identified by another person, and though he denies it, he does so, I believe, in your interest. But I asked whether you knew who the man is in order to prove another of Jacques Collin’s impostures.”
Lucien felt as though he had hot iron in his inside as he heard this alarming statement.
“Do you not know,” Camusot went on, “that in order to give color to the extraordinary affection he has for you, he declares that he is your father?”
“He! My father?—Oh, monsieur, did he tell you that?”
“Have you any suspicion of where the money came from that he used to give you? For, if I am to believe the evidence of the letter you have in your hand, that poor girl, Mademoiselle Esther, must have done you lately the same services as Coralie formerly rendered you. Still, for some years, as you have just admitted, you lived very handsomely without receiving anything from her.”
“It is I who should ask you, monsieur, whence convicts get their money! Jacques Collin my father!—Oh, my poor mother!” and Lucien burst into tears.
“Coquart, read out to the prisoner that part of Carlos Herrera’s examination in which he said that Lucien de Rubempre was his son.”
The poet listened in silence, and with a look that was terrible to behold.
“I am done for!” he cried.
“A man is not done for who is faithful to the path of honor and truth,” said the judge.