At a sign from the judge the prisoner was dressed by Monsieur Lebrun and the attendant, who then withdrew with the usher.  Camusot sat down at his table and played with his pen.

“You have an aunt,” he suddenly said to Jacques Collin.

“An aunt?” echoed Don Carlos Herrera with amazement.  “Why, monsieur, I have no relations.  I am the unacknowledged son of the late Duke of Ossuna.”

But to himself he said, “They are burning”—­an allusion to the game of hot cockles, which is indeed a childlike symbol of the dreadful struggle between justice and the criminal.

“Pooh!” said Camusot.  “You still have an aunt living, Mademoiselle Jacqueline Collin, whom you placed in Esther’s service under the eccentric name of Asie.”

Jacques Collin shrugged his shoulders with an indifference that was in perfect harmony with the cool curiosity he gave throughout to the judge’s words, while Camusot studied him with cunning attention.

“Take care,” said Camusot; “listen to me.”

“I am listening, sir.”

“You aunt is a wardrobe dealer at the Temple; her business is managed by a demoiselle Paccard, the sister of a convict—­herself a very good girl, known as la Romette.  Justice is on the traces of your aunt, and in a few hours we shall have decisive evidence.  The woman is wholly devoted to you——­”

“Pray go on, Monsieur le Juge,” said Collin coolly, in answer to a pause; “I am listening to you.”

“Your aunt, who is about five years older than you are, was formerly Marat’s mistress—­of odious memory.  From that blood-stained source she derived the little fortune she possesses.

“From information I have received she must be a very clever receiver of stolen goods, for no proofs have yet been found to commit her on.  After Marat’s death she seems, from the notes I have here, to have lived with a chemist who was condemned to death in the year XII. for issuing false coin.  She was called as witness in the case.  It was from this intimacy that she derived her knowledge of poisons.

“In 1812 and in 1816 she spent two years in prison for placing girls under age upon the streets.

“You were already convicted of forgery; you had left the banking house where your aunt had been able to place you as clerk, thanks to the education you had had, and the favor enjoyed by your aunt with certain persons for whose debaucheries she supplied victims.

“All this, prisoner, is not much like the dignity of the Dukes d’Ossuna.

“Do you persist in your denial?”

Jacques Collin sat listening to Monsieur Camusot, and thinking of his happy childhood at the College of the Oratorians, where he had been brought up, a meditation which lent him a truly amazed look.  And in spite of his skill as a practised examiner, Camusot could bring no sort of expression to those placid features.

“If you have accurately recorded the account of myself I gave you at first,” said Jacques Collin, “you can read it through again.  I cannot alter the facts.  I never went to the woman’s house; how should I know who her cook was?  The persons of whom you speak are utterly unknown to me.”