“Come, come!” said the magistrate.  “No scene!”

Crochard sighed deeply, and then continued in a tearful tone,—­

“They might cut me to pieces, and I would not be able to say what happened after that.  I was dead drunk, and do not recollect a thing any more.  From what Chevassat afterwards told me, I had to be carried to the carriage; and he took me to a hotel in the suburb, where he hired a lodging for me.  When I woke the next day, a little before noon, my head was as heavy as lead; and I tried to recall what had happened at the restaurant, and if it was not perhaps merely the bad wine that had given me the nightmare.

“Unfortunately, it was no dream; and I soon found that out, when a waiter came up and brought me a letter.  Chevassat wrote me to come to his house, and to breakfast with him for the purpose of talking business.

“Of course I went.  I asked the concierge where M. Justin Chevassat lives in the house; and he directs me to go to the second floor, on the right hand.  I go up, ring the bell; a servant opens the door; I enter, and find, in an elegant apartment, my brigand in a dressing-gown, stretched out on a sofa.  On the way I had made up my mind to tell him positively that he need not count upon me; that the thing was a horror to me; and that I retracted all I had said.  But, as soon as I began, he became perfectly furious, calling me a coward and a traitor, and telling me that I had no choice but to make my fortune, or to receive a blow with the big knife between my shoulders.  At the same time he spread out before me a great heap of gold.  Then, yes, then I was weak.  I felt I was caught.  Chevassat frightened me; the gold intoxicated me.  I pledged my word; and the bargain was made.”

As he said this, Crochard, surnamed Bagnolet, sighed deeply and noisily, like a man whose heart has been relieved of a grievous burden.  He really felt prodigiously relieved.  To have to confess everything on the spot, without a moment’s respite to combine a plan of apology, was a hard task.  Now, the wretch had stood this delicate and dangerous trial pretty well, and thought he had managed cleverly enough to prepare for the day of his trial a number of extenuating circumstances.  But the magistrate hardly gave him time to breathe.

“Not so fast,” he said:  “we are not done yet.  What were the conditions which you and Chevassat agreed upon?”

“Oh! very simple, sir.  I, for my part, said yes to everything he proposed.  He magnetized me, I tell you, that man!  We agreed, therefore, that he would pay me four thousand francs in advance, and that, after the accident, he would give me six thousand certain, and a portion of the sum which he would secure.”

“Thus you undertook, for ten thousand francs, to murder a man?”

“I thought”—­

“That sum is very far from those fabulous amounts by which you said you had been blinded and carried away.”