“Resign?” said he to himself.  “Where, then, would be my courage?  Ought I not rather to remain the representative of the law, incapable of emotion, insensible to prejudice? am I so weak that, in assuming my office, I am unable to divest myself of my personality?  Can I not, for the present, make abstraction of the past?  My duty is to pursue this investigation.  Claire herself would desire me to act thus.  Would she wed a man suspected of a crime?  Never.  If he is innocent, he will be saved; if guilty, let him perish!”

This was very sound reasoning; but, at the bottom of his heart, a thousand disquietudes darted their thorns.  He wanted to reassure himself.

“Do I still hate this young man?” he continued.  “No, certainly.  If Claire has preferred him to me, it is to Claire and not to him I owe my suffering.  My rage was no more than a passing fit of delirium.  I will prove it, by letting him find me as much a counsellor as a magistrate.  If he is not guilty, he shall make use of all the means in my power to establish his innocence.  Yes, I am worthy to be his judge.  Heaven, who reads all my thoughts, sees that I love Claire enough to desire with all my heart the innocence of her lover.”

Only then did M. Daburon seem to be vaguely aware of the lapse of time.  It was nearly three o’clock in the morning.

“Goodness!” cried he; “why, old Tabaret is waiting for me.  I shall probably find him asleep.”

But M. Tabaret was not asleep.  He had noticed the passage of time no more than the magistrate.

Ten minutes had sufficed him to take an inventory of the contents of M. Daburon’s study, which was large, and handsomely furnished in accordance with his position and fortune.  Taking up a lamp, he first admired six very valuable pictures, which ornamented the walls; he then examined with considerable curiosity some rare bronzes placed about the room, and bestowed on the bookcase the glance of a connoisseur.

After which, taking an evening paper from the table, he approached the hearth, and seated himself in a vast armchair.

He had not read a third of the leading article, which, like all leading articles of the time, was exclusively occupied with the Roman question, when, letting the paper drop from his hands, he became absorbed in meditation.  The fixed idea, stronger than one’s will, and more interesting to him than politics, brought him forcibly back to La Jonchere, where lay the murdered Widow Lerouge.  Like the child who again and again builds up and demolishes his house of cards, he arranged and entangled alternately his chain of inductions and arguments.

In his own mind there was certainly no longer a doubt as regards this sad affair, and it seemed to him that M. Daburon shared his opinions.  But yet, what difficulties there still remained to encounter!

There exists between the investigating magistrate and the accused a supreme tribunal, an admirable institution which is a guarantee for all, a powerful moderator, the jury.