M. Ginory leaned over the table. He was calm and held his pen with which he had signed the order, suspended in the air. The young man rushed forward wild with anger, and if the guards had not held him back, he would have seized M. Ginory's fat neck with both hands. The guards held Pradès back, while the Examining Magistrate, carelessly pricking the table with his pen, gently said, with a smile:
"All the same, more than one malefactor has betrayed himself in a fit of anger. I have often thought that it would take very little to get myself assassinated, when I had before me an accused person whom I felt was guilty and who would not confess. Take away the man!"
While they were pushing Pradès toward the corridor he shouted: "Canailles." M. Ginory ordered that Dantin should be left alone with him. "Alone," he said to Bernardet, whose look was a little uneasy. The registrar half rose from his chair, picking up his papers and pushing them into the pockets of his much worn paper case.
"No; you may remain, Favarel."
"Well," said the Magistrate in a familiar tone, when he found himself face to face with Jacques Dantin. "Have you reflected?"
Jacques Dantin, his lips pressed closely together, did not reply.
"It is a counsellor—a counsellor of an especial kind—the cell. He who invented it"——
"Yes;" Dantin brusquely interrupted. "The brain suffers between those walls. I have not slept since I went there. Not slept at all. Insomnia is killing me. It seems as if I should go crazy!"
"Then?" asked M. Ginory.
"Then"——