To be sure, he was a thousand miles from imagining that they had actually opened communications with the prisoner, and, what is more, that this intercourse was carried on by Mechinet, his own clerk.  He would have laughed if one had come and told him that Dionysia had spent a night in prison, and paid Jacques a visit.  But he heard continually of the hopes and the plans of the friends and relations of his prisoner; and he remembered, not without secret fear and trembling that they were rich and powerful, supported by relations in high places, beloved and esteemed by everybody.  He knew that Dionysia was surrounded by devoted and intelligent men, by M. de Chandore, M. Seneschal, Dr. Seignebos, M. Magloire, and, finally, that advocate whom the Marchioness de Boiscoran had brought down with her from Paris, M. Folgat.

“And Heaven knows what they would not try,” he thought, “to rescue the guilty man from the hands of justice!”

It may well be said, therefore, that never was prosecution carried on with as much passionate zeal or as much minute assiduity.  Every one of the points upon which the prosecution relied became, for M. Galpin, a subject of special study.  In less than a fortnight he examined sixty-seven witnesses in his office.  He summoned the fourth part of the population of Brechy.  He would have summoned the whole country, if he had dared.

But all his efforts were fruitless.  After weeks of furious investigations, the inquiry was still at the same point, the mystery was still impenetrable.  The prisoner had not refuted any of the charges made against him; but the magistrate had, also, not obtained a single additional piece of evidence after those he had secured on the first day.

There must be an end of this, however.

One warm afternoon in July, the good ladies in National Street thought they noticed that M. Galpin looked even more anxious than usual.  They were right.  After a long conference with the commonwealth attorney and the presiding judge, the magistrate had made up his mind.  When he reached the prison, he went to Jacques’s cell and there, concealing his embarrassment under the greatest stiffness, he said,—­

“My painful duty draws to an end, sir:  the inquiry with which I have been charged will be closed.  To-morrow the papers, with a list of the objects to be used as evidence, will be sent to the attorney-general, to be submitted to the court.”

Jacques de Boiscoran did not move.

“Well,” he said simply.

“Have you nothing to add, sir?” asked M. Galpin.

“Nothing, except that I am innocent.”

M. Galpin found it difficult to repress his impatience.  He said,—­

“Well, then, prove it.  Refute the charges which have been brought against you, which overwhelm you, which induce me, the court, and everybody else, to consider you guilty.  Speak, and explain your conduct.”

Jacques kept obstinately silent.