“Give me two summonses of witnesses and I will find you some to-day.”

“Coquart,” said the lawyer, as he took off his gloves, and placed his hat and stick in a corner, “fill up two summonses by monsieur’s directions.”

He looked at himself in the glass over the chimney shelf, where stood, in the place of a clock, a basin and jug.  On one side was a bottle of water and a glass, on the other a lamp.  He rang the bell; his usher came in a few minutes after.

“Is anybody here for me yet?” he asked the man, whose business it was to receive the witnesses, to verify their summons, and to set them in the order of their arrival.

“Yes, sir.”

“Take their names, and bring me the list.”

The examining judges, to save time, are often obliged to carry on several inquiries at once.  Hence the long waiting inflicted on the witnesses, who have seats in the ushers’ hall, where the judges’ bells are constantly ringing.

“And then,” Camusot went on, “bring up the Abbe Carlos Herrera.”

“Ah, ha!  I was told that he was a priest in Spanish.  Pooh!  It is a new edition of Collet, Monsieur Camusot,” said the head of the Safety department.

“There is nothing new!” replied Camusot.

And he signed the two formidable documents which alarm everybody, even the most innocent witnesses, whom the law thus requires to appear, under severe penalties in case of failure.

By this time Jacques Collin had, about half an hour since, finished his deep meditations, and was armed for the fray.  Nothing is more perfectly characteristic of this type of the mob in rebellion against the law than the few words he had written on the greasy scraps of paper.

The sense of the first—­for it was written in the language, the very slang of slang, agreed upon by Asie and himself, a cipher of words —­was as follows:—­

“Go to the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse or Madame de Serizy:  one of them must see Lucien before he is examined, and give him the enclosed paper to read.  Then find Europe and Paccard; those two thieves must be at my orders, and ready to play any part I may set them.

“Go to Rastignac; tell him, from the man he met at the opera-ball, to come and swear that the Abbe Carlos Herrera has no resemblance to Jacques Collin who was apprehended at Vauquer’s.  Do the same with Dr. Bianchon, and get Lucien’s two women to work to the same end.”

On the enclosed fragment were these words in good French: 

  “Lucien, confess nothing about me.  I am the Abbe Carlos Herrera. 
  Not only will this be your exculpation; but, if you do not lose
  your head, you will have seven millions and your honor cleared.”

These two bits of paper, gummed on the side of the writing so as to look like one piece, were then rolled tightly, with a dexterity peculiar to men who have dreamed of getting free from the hulks.  The whole thing assumed the shape and consistency of a ball of dirty rubbish, about as big as the sealing-wax heads which thrifty women stick on the head of a large needle when the eye is broken.