“Very well,” said M. Magloire again approvingly.

“And your other charges,” continued M. Folgat, as if he were standing in court, and addressing the jury,—­“your other charges have all the same weight.  Our letter to Miss Dionysia—­why do you refer to that?  Because, you say, it proves our premeditation.  Ah! there I hold you.  Are we really so stupid and bereft of common sense?  That is not our reputation.  What! we premeditate a crime, and we do not say to ourselves that we shall certainly be convicted unless we prepare an alibi!  What! we leave home with the fixed purpose of killing a man, and we load our gun with small-shot!  Really, you make the defence too easy; for your charges do not stand being examined.”

It was Jacques’s turn, this time, to testify his approbation.

“That is,” he said, “what I have told Galpin over and over again; and he never had any thing to say in reply.  We must insist on that point.”

M. Folgat was consulting his notes.

“I now come to a very important circumstance, and one which I should, at the trial, make a decisive question, if it should be favorable to our side.  Your valet, my dear client,—­your old Anthony,—­told me that he had cleaned and washed your breech-loader the night before the crime.”

“Great God!” exclaimed Jacques.

“Well, I see you appreciate the importance of the fact.  Between that cleaning and the time when you set a cartridge on fire, in order to burn the letters of the Countess Claudieuse, did you fire your gun?  If you did, we must say nothing more about it.  If you did not, one of the barrels of the breech-loader must be clean, and then you are safe.”

For more than a minute, Jacques remained silent, trying to recall the facts; at last he replied,—­

“It seems to me, I am sure, I fired at a rabbit on the morning of the fatal day.”

M. Magloire looked disappointed.

“Fate again!” he said.

“Oh, wait!” cried Jacques.  “I am quite sure, at all events, that I killed that rabbit at the first shot.  Consequently, I can have fouled only one barrel of the gun.  If I have used the same barrel at Valpinson, to get a light, I am safe.  With a double gun, one almost instinctively first uses the right-hand barrel.”

M. Magloire’s face grew darker.

“Never mind,” he said, “we cannot possibly make an argument upon such an uncertain chance,—­a chance which, in case of error, would almost fatally turn against us.  But at the trial, when they show you the gun, examine it, so that you can tell me how that matter stands.”

Thus they had sketched the outlines of their plan of defence.  There remained nothing now but to perfect the details; and to this task the two lawyers were devoting themselves still, when Blangin, the jailer, called to them through the wicket, that the doors of the prison were about to be closed.

“Five minutes more, my good Blangin!” cried Jacques.