“Well, sir,” replied the sailor, “what can I say?  I thought that Claudine had wearied out the people from whom she drew money, like water from a well; or else getting drunk one day, she had blabbed too freely.”

The testimony being as complete as possible, M. Daburon dismissed Lerouge, at the same time telling him to wait for Gevrol, who would take him to a hotel, where he might wait, at the disposal of justice, until further orders.

“All your expenses will be paid you,” added the magistrate.

Lerouge had scarcely left, when an extraordinary, unheard of, unprecedented event took place in the magistrate’s office.  Constant, the serious, impressive, immovable, deaf and dumb Constant, rose from his seat and spoke.

He broke a silence of fifteen years.  He forgot himself so far as to offer an opinion.

“This, sir,” said he, “is a most extraordinary affair.”

Very extraordinary, truly, thought M. Daburon, and calculated to rout all predictions, all preconceived opinions.

Why had he, the magistrate, moved with such deplorable haste?  Why before risking anything, had he not waited to possess all the elements of this important case, to hold all the threads of this complicated drama?

Justice is accused of slowness; but it is this very slowness that constitutes its strength and surety, its almost infallibility.  One scarcely knows what a time evidence takes to produce itself.  There is no knowing what important testimony investigations apparently useless may reveal.

When the entanglement of the various passions and motives seems hopeless, an unknown personage presents himself, coming from no one knows where, and it is he who explains everything.

M. Daburon, usually the most prudent of men, had considered as simple one of the most complex of cases.  He had acted in a mysterious crime, which demanded the utmost caution, as carelessly as though it were a case of simple misdemeanour.  Why?  Because his memory had not left him his free deliberation, judgment, and discernment.  He had feared equally appearing weak and being revengeful.  Thinking himself sure of his facts, he had been carried away by his animosity.  And yet how often had he not asked himself:  Where is duty?  But then, when one is at all doubtful about duty, one is on the wrong road.

The singular part of it all was that the magistrate’s faults sprang from his very honesty.  He had been led astray by a too great refinement of conscience.  The scruples which troubled him had filled his mind with phantoms, and had prompted in him the passionate animosity he had displayed at a certain moment.