“At what hour?”
“Just as I was getting up: he walked about his room all night, and was dressed when I came downstairs.”
“Was it daylight?”
“Barely.”
“Did he seem excited?”
“Yes, he was all of a twitter.”
“Send one of your men for my clerk,” said Lousteau-Prangin to the lieutenant, “and tell him to bring warrants with him—”
“Good God! don’t be in such a hurry,” cried Monsieur Hochon. “The young man’s agitation may have been caused by something besides the premeditation of this crime. He meant to return to Paris to-day, to attend to a matter in which Gilet and Mademoiselle Brazier had doubted his honor.”
“Yes, the affair of the pictures,” said Monsieur Mouilleron. “Those pictures caused a very hot quarrel between them yesterday, and it is a word and a blow with artists, they tell me.”
“Who is there in Issoudun who had any object in killing Gilet?” said Lousteau. “No one,—neither a jealous husband nor anybody else; for the fellow has never harmed a soul.”