“By the first one I came across.”

“Who sewed it on?”

“I did.”

“Are you in the habit of sewing on your buttons yourself?”

Although the judge did not press this question by his tone, nor by the form in which he made it, Florentin saw the strength of the accusation that his reply would make against him.

“Sometimes,” he said.

“And yet, on returning home, you found your mother, you told me.  Was there any reason why she could not sew this button on for you?”

“I did not ask her to do it.”

“But when she saw you sewing it, did she not take the needle from your hands?”

“She did not see me.”

“Why?”

“She was occupied preparing our dinner.”

“That is sufficient.”

“I was in the entry of our apartment, where I have slept since my return; my mother was in the kitchen.”

“Is there no communication between the kitchen and the entry?”

“The door was closed.”

A flood of words rushed to his lips, to protest against the conclusions which seemed to follow these answers, but he kept them back.  He saw himself caught in a net, and all his efforts to free himself only bound him more strongly.

As he was asked no more questions it seemed to him best to say nothing, and he was silent a long time, of the duration of which he was only vaguely conscious.

The judge talked in a low tone, the recorder wrote rapidly, and he heard only a monotonous murmur that interrupted the scratching of a pen on the paper.

“Your testimony will now be read to you,” the judge said.

He wished to give all his attention to this reading, but he soon lost the thread of it.  The impression it made upon him, however, was that it faithfully reproduced all that he had said, and he signed it.

“Now,” said the judge, “my duty obliges me, in presence of the charges which emanate from your testimony, to deliver against you a ’manda depot’.”

Florentin received this blow without flinching.

“I know,” he said, “that all the protestations I might make would have no effect at this moment; I therefore spare you them.  But I have a favor to ask of you; it is to permit me to write to my mother and sister the news of my arrest—­they love me tenderly.  Oh, you shall read my letter!”

“You may, sir.”

CHAPTER XXI

“Regarding the Caffie affair”

After the departure of her son and the detective, Madame Cormier was prostrated.  Her son!  Her Florentin!  The poor child!  And she was sunk in despair.

Had they not suffered enough?  Was this new proof necessary?  Why had their life been so unmercifully cruel?  Why had not Dr. Saniel let her die?  At least she would not have seen this last catastrophe, this disgrace; her son accused of assassination, in prison, at the assizes!