“The marchioness.  She has just come with Anthony, M. Jacques’s own man.”

He hardly said so, when the marchioness herself entered, looking even worse than she had done in the prison parlor; for she was overcome by the fatigue of a night spent on the road.

The marquis had started up suddenly.  As soon as the servant had left the room, and shut the door again, he said with trembling voice, as if wishing for an answer, and still fearing to hear it,—­

“Has any thing unusual happened?”

“Yes.”

“Good or bad?”

“Sad.”

“Great God!  Jacques has not confessed?”

“How could he confess when he is innocent?”

“Then he has explained?”

“As far as I am concerned, and M. Folgat, Dr. Seignebos, and all who know him and love him, yes, but not for the public, for his enemies, or the law.  He has explained every thing; but he has no proof.”

The mournful features of the marquis settled into still deeper gloom.

“In other words, he has to be believed on his own word?” he asked.

“Don’t you believe him?”

“I am not the judge of that, but the jury.”

“Well, for the jury he will find proof.  M. Folgat, who has come in the same train with me, and whom you will see to-day, hopes to discover proof.”

“Proof of what?”

Perhaps the marchioness was not unprepared for such a reception.  She expected it, and still she was disconcerted.

“Jacques,” she began, “has been the lover of the Countess Claudieuse.”

“Ah, ah!” broke in the marquis.

And, in a tone of offensive irony, he added,—­

“No doubt another story of adultery; eh?”

The marchioness did not answer.  She quietly went on,—­

“When the countess heard of Jacques’s marriage, and that he abandoned her, she became exasperated, and determined to be avenged.”

“And, in order to be avenged, she attempted to murder her husband; eh?”

“She wished to be free.”

The Marquis de Boiscoran interrupted his wife with a formidable oath.  Then he cried,—­

“And that is all Jacques could invent!  And to come to such an abortive story—­was that the reason of his obstinate silence?”

“You do not let me finish.  Our son is the victim of unparalleled coincidences.”

“Of course!  Unparalleled coincidences!  That is what every one of the thousand or two thousand rascals say who are sentenced every year.  Do you think they confess?  Not they!  Ask them, and they will prove to you that they are the victims of fate, of some dark plot, and, finally, of an error of judgment.  As if justice could err in these days of ours, after all these preliminary examinations, long inquiries, and careful investigations.”

“You will see M. Folgat.  He will tell you what hope there is.”

“And if all hope fails?”

The marchioness hung her head.