The woman Courtois, who comes next, evidently wishes she were a thousand miles away.  The president has to make the very greatest efforts to obtain, word by word, her evidence, which, after all, amounts to next to nothing.

Then follow two farmers from Brechy, who have been present at the violent altercation which ended in M. de Boiscoran’s aiming with his gun at Count Claudieuse.

Their account, interrupted by numberless parentheses, is very obscure.  One of the counsel of the defendant requests them to be more explicit; and thereupon they become utterly unintelligible.  Besides, they contradict each other.  One has looked upon the act of the accused as a mere jest:  the other has looked upon it so seriously as to throw himself between the two men, in order to prevent M. de Boiscoran from killing his adversary then and there.

Once more the accused protests, energetically, he never hated Count Claudieuse:  there was no reason why he should hate him.

The obstinate peasant insists upon it that a lawsuit is always a sufficient reason for hating a man.  And thereupon he undertakes to explain the lawsuit, and how Count Claudieuse, by stopping the water of the Seille, overflowed M. de Boiscoran’s meadows.

The president at last stops the discussion, and orders another witness to be brought in.

This man swears he has head M. de Boiscoran say, that, sooner or later, he would put a ball into Count Claudieuse.  He adds, that the accused is a terrible man, who threatened to shoot people upon the slightest provocation.  And, to support his evidence, he states that once before, to the knowledge of the whole country, M. de Boiscoran has fired at a man.

The accused undertakes to explain this.  A scamp, who he thinks was no one else but the witness on the stand, came every night and stole his tenants’ fruit and vegetables.  One night he kept watch, and gave him a load of salt.  He does not know whether he hit him.  At all events, the thief never complained, and thus was never found out.

The next witness is a constable from Brechy.  He deposes that once Count Claudieuse, by stopping up the waters of the little stream, the Seille, had caused M. de Boiscoran a loss of twenty thousand weight of first-rate hay.  He confesses that such a bad neighbor would certainly have exasperated him.

The prosecuting attorney does not deny the fact, but adds, that Count Claudieuse offered to pay damages.  M. de Boiscoran had refused with insulting haughtiness.

The accused replies, that he had refused upon the advice of his lawyer, but that he had not used insulting words.

Next appeared the witnesses summoned by the defence.