The coolness of M. Domini was disheartening.

“Let us see,” said he after a pause:  “where did you pass the night?  How did you get this money?  And what does this address mean?”

“Eh!” cried Guespin, with the rage of powerlessness, “I should tell you what you would not believe.”

The judge was about to ask another question, but Guespin cut him short.

“No; you wouldn’t believe me,” he repeated, his eyes glistening with anger.  “Do men like you believe men like me?  I have a past, you know, of antecedents, as you would say.  The past!  They throw that in my face, as if, the future depended on the past.  Well, yes; it’s true, I’m a debauchee, a gambler, a drunkard, an idler, but what of it?  It’s true I have been before the police court, and condemned for night poaching—­what does that prove?  I have wasted my life, but whom have I wronged if not myself?  My past!  Have I not sufficiently expiated it?”

Guespin was self-possessed, and finding in himself sensations which awoke a sort of eloquence, he expressed himself with a savage energy well calculated to strike his hearers.

“I have not always served others,” he continued; “my father was in easy circumstances—­almost rich.  He had large gardens, near Saumur, and he passed for one of the best gardeners of that region.  I was educated, and when sixteen years old, began to study law.  Four years later they thought me a talented youth.  Unhappily for me, my father died.  He left me a landed property worth a hundred thousand francs:  I sold it out for sixty thousand and went to Paris.  I was a fool then.  I had the fever of pleasure-seeking, a thirst for all sorts of pastimes, perfect health, plenty of money.  I found Paris a narrow limit for my vices; it seemed to me that the objects of my desires were wanting.  I thought my sixty thousand francs would last forever.”

Guespin paused; a thousand memories of those times rushed into his thoughts and he muttered: 

“Those were good times.”

“My sixty thousand francs,” he resumed, “held out eight years.  Then I hadn’t a sou, yet I longed to continue my way of living.  You understand, don’t you?  About this time, the police, one night, arrested me.  I was ‘detained’ six months.  You will find the records of the affair at the prefecture.  Do you know what it will tell you?  It will tell you that on leaving prison I fell into that shameful and abominable misery which exists in Paris.  It will tell you that I have lived among the worst and lowest outcasts of Paris—­ and it is the truth.”

The worthy mayor was filled with consternation.

“Good Heaven!” thought he, “what an audacious and cynical rascal! and to think that one is liable at any time to admit such servants into his house!”

The judge held his tongue.  He knew that Guespin was in such a state that, under the irresistible impulse of passion, he might betray his innermost thoughts.