“You are going to do something, are you not, my little Phillis?”

“I am going to find Doctor Saniel.”

“He is a doctor, not a lawyer.”

“It is exactly as a doctor that he can save Florentin.  He knows that Caffie was killed without a struggle between him and the assassin; consequently without the wrenching off of a button.  He will say it and prove it to the judge, and Florentin’s innocence is evident.  I am going to see him.”

“I beg of you, do not leave me alone too long.”

“I will come back immediately.”

Phillis ran from the Batignolles to the Rue Louis-le-Grand.  In answer to her ring, Joseph, who had returned to his place in the anteroom, opened the door, and as Saniel was alone, she went immediately to his office.

“What is the matter?” he asked, on seeing her agitation.

“My brother is arrested.”

“Ah!  The poor boy!”

What he had said to her on explaining that this arrest could not take place was sincere; he believed it, and he more than believed it, he wished it.  When he decided to kill Caffie he had not thought that the law would ever discover a criminal; it would be a crime that would remain unpunished, as so many were, and no one would be disturbed.  But now the law had found and arrested one who was the brother of the woman he loved.

“How was he arrested?” he asked, as much for the sake of knowing as to recover himself.

She told what she knew, and read Florentin’s letter.

“He is a good boy, your brother,” he said, as if talking to himself.

“You will save him?”

“How can I?”

This cry escaped him without her understanding its weight; without her divining the expression of anxious curiosity in his glance.

“To whom shall I address myself, if not to you?  Are you not everything to me?  My support, my guide, my counsel, my God!”

She explained what she wished him to do.  Once more an exclamation escaped Saniel.

“You wish me to go to the judge—­me?”

“Who, better than you, can explain how things happened?”

Saniel, who had recovered from his first feeling of surprise, did not flinch.  Evidently she spoke with entire honesty, suspecting nothing, and it would be folly to look for more than she said.

“But I cannot present myself before a judge in such away,” he said.  “It is he who sends for those he wants to see.”

“Why can you not go to his court, since you know things which will throw light upon it?”

“Is it truly easy to go before this court?  In going before it, I make myself the defender of your brother.”

“That is exactly what I ask of you.”

“And in presenting myself as his defender, I take away the weight of my deposition, which would have more authority if it were that of a simple witness.”

“But when will you be asked for this deposition?  Think of Florentin’s sufferings during this time, of mamma’s, and of mine.  He may lose his head; he may kill himself.  His spirit is not strong, nor is mamma’s.  How will they bear all that the newspapers will publish?”