“And you failed to understand him! If you are so deaf, you will indeed be an examining judge all your life without any knowledge whatever of the question.—At any rate, have sense enough to listen to me,” she went on, silencing her husband, who was about to speak. “You think the matter is done for?” she asked.
Camusot looked at his wife as a country bumpkin looks at a conjurer.
“If the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse and Madame de Serizy are compromised, you will find them both ready to patronize you,” said Amelie. “Madame de Serizy will get you admission to the Keeper of the Seals, and you will tell him the secret history of the affair; then he will amuse the King with the story, for sovereigns always wish to see the wrong side of the tapestry and to know the real meaning of the events the public stare at open-mouthed. Henceforth there will be no cause to fear either the public prosecutor or Monsieur de Serizy.”
“What a treasure such a wife is!” cried the lawyer, plucking up courage. “After all, I have unearthed Jacques Collin; I shall send him to his account at the Assize Court and unmask his crimes. Such a trial is a triumph in the career of an examining judge!”
“Camusot,” Amelie began, pleased to see her husband rally from the moral and physical prostration into which he had been thrown by Lucien’s suicide, “the President told you that you had blundered to the wrong side. Now you are blundering as much to the other—you are losing your way again, my dear.”
The magistrate stood up, looking at his wife with a stupid stare.
“The King and the Keeper of the Seals will be glad, no doubt, to know the truth of this business, and at the same time much annoyed at seeing the lawyers on the Liberal side dragging important persons to the bar of opinion and of the Assize Court by their special pleading—such people as the Maufrigneuses, the Serizys, and the Grandlieus, in short, all who are directly or indirectly mixed up with this case.”
“They are all in it; I have them all!” cried Camusot.
And Camusot walked up and down the room like Sganarelle on the stage when he is trying to get out of a scrape.
“Listen, Amelie,” said he, standing in front of his wife. “An incident recurs to my mind, a trifle in itself, but, in my position, of vital importance.