He wondered why his people were so long in making their appearance.  He walked up and down the room, counting the minutes, drawing out his watch three times within a quarter of an hour, to compare it with the clock.  Every time he heard a step in the passage, almost deserted at that hour, he moved near the door, stopped and listened.  At length some one knocked.  It was his clerk, whom he had sent for.  There was nothing particular in this man; he was tall rather than big, and very slim.  His gait was precise, his gestures were methodical, and his face was as impassive as if it had been cut out of a piece of yellow wood.  He was thirty-four years of age and during fifteen years had acted as clerk to four investigating magistrates in succession.  He could hear the most astonishing things without moving a muscle.  His name was Constant.

He bowed to the magistrate, and excused himself for his tardiness.  He had been busy with some book-keeping, which he did every morning; and his wife had had to send after him.

“You are still in good time,” said M. Daburon:  “but we shall soon have plenty of work:  so you had better get your paper ready.”

Five minutes later, the usher introduced M. Noel Gerdy.  He entered with an easy manner, like an advocate who was well acquainted with the Palais, and who knew its winding ways.  He in no wise resembled, this morning, old Tabaret’s friend; still less could he have been recognized as Madame Juliette’s lover.  He was entirely another being, or rather he had resumed his every-day bearing.  From his firm step, his placid face, one would never imagine that, after an evening of emotion and excitement, after a secret visit to his mistress, he had passed the night by the pillow of a dying woman, and that woman his mother, or at least one who had filled his mother’s place.

What a contrast between him and the magistrate!

M. Daburon had not slept either:  but one could easily see that in his feebleness, in his anxious look, in the dark, circles about his eyes.  His shirt-front was all rumpled, and his cuffs were far from clean.  Carried away by the course of events, the mind had forgotten the body.  Noel’s well-shaved chin, on the contrary, rested upon an irreproachably white cravat; his collar did not show a crease; his hair and his whiskers had been most carefully brushed.  He bowed to M. Daburon, and held out the summons he had received.

“You summoned me, sir,” he said; “and I am here awaiting your orders.”

The investigating magistrate had met the young advocate several times in the lobbies of the Palais; and he knew him well by sight.  He remembered having heard M. Gerdy spoken of as a man of talent and promise, whose reputation was fast rising.  He therefore welcomed him as a fellow-workman, and invited him to be seated.

The preliminaries common in the examinations of all witnesses ended; the name, surname, age, place of business, and so on having been written down, the magistrate, who had followed his clerk with his eyes while he was writing, turned towards Noel.