among the five masked men one who exactly resembled Michu.  The color of the hair and whiskers and the thick-set figure of the man made the mask he wore useless.  Besides, who but Michu could have opened the iron gates of the park with a key?  The present bailiff and his wife, now returned from the masquerade, deposed to have locked both gates before leaving the pavilion.  The gates when examined showed no sign of being forced.

“When we turned him off he must have taken some duplicate keys with him,” remarked Grevin.  “No doubt he has been meditating a desperate step, for he has lately sold his whole property, and he received the money for it in my office day before yesterday.”

“The others have followed his lead!” exclaimed Lechesneau, struck with the circumstances.  “He has been their evil genius.”

Moreover, who could know as well as the Messieurs de Simeuse the ins and outs of the chateau.  None of the assailants seemed to have blundered in their search; they had gone through the house in a confident way which showed that they knew what they wanted to find and where to find it.  The locks of none of the opened closets had been forced; therefore the delinquents had keys.  Strange to say, however, nothing had been taken; the motive, therefore, was not robbery.  More than all, when Violette had followed the tracks of the horses as far as the rond-point, he had found the countess, evidently on guard, at the pavilion.  From such a combination of facts and depositions arose a presumption as to the guilt of the Messieurs de Simeuse, d’Hauteserre, and Michu, which would have been strong to unprejudiced minds, and to the director of the jury had the force of certainty.  What were they likely to do to the future Comte de Gondreville?  Did they mean to force him to make over the estate for which Michu declared in 1799 he had the money to pay?

But there was another aspect of the cast to the knowing criminal lawyer.  He asked himself what could be the object of the careful search made of the chateau.  If revenge were at the bottom of the matter, the assailants would have killed the senator.  Perhaps he had been killed and buried.  The abduction, however, seemed to point to imprisonment.  But why keep their victim imprisoned after searching the castle?  It was folly to suppose that the abduction of a dignitary of the Empire could long remain secret.  The publicity of the matter would prevent any benefit from it.

To these suggestions Pigoult replied that justice was never able to make out all the motives of scoundrels.  In every criminal case there were obscurities, he said, between the judge and the guilty person; conscience had depths into which no human mind could enter unless by the confession of the criminal.

Grevin and Lechesneau nodded their assent, without, however, relaxing their determination to see to the bottom of the present mystery.

“The Emperor pardoned those young men,” said Pigoult to Grevin.  “He removed their names from the list of emigres, though they certainly took part in that last conspiracy against him.”