If it is natural to man to be suspicious as to some favor required of him when it is antagonistic to his interests or his duty, and sometimes even when it is a matter of indifference, this feeling is law to an examining magistrate.  The more this prisoner—­whose identity was not yet ascertained—­pointed to clouds on the horizon in the event of Lucien’s being examined, the more necessary did the interrogatory seem to Camusot.  Even if this formality had not been required by the Code and by common practice, it was indispensable as bearing on the identification of the Abbe Carlos.  There is in every walk of life the business conscience.  In default of curiosity Camusot would have examined Lucien as he had examined Jacques Collin, with all the cunning which the most honest magistrate allows himself to use in such cases.  The services he might render and his own promotion were secondary in Camusot’s mind to his anxiety to know or guess the truth, even if he should never tell it.

He stood drumming on the window-pane while following the river-like current of his conjectures, for in these moods thought is like a stream flowing through many countries.  Magistrates, in love with truth, are like jealous women; they give way to a thousand hypotheses, and probe them with the dagger-point of suspicion, as the sacrificing priest of old eviscerated his victims; thus they arrive, not perhaps at truth, but at probability, and at last see the truth beyond.  A woman cross-questions the man she loves as the judge cross-questions a criminal.  In such a frame of mind, a glance, a word, a tone of voice, the slightest hesitation is enough to certify the hidden fact—­treason or crime.

“The style in which he depicted his devotion to his son—­if he is his son—­is enough to make me think that he was in the girl’s house to keep an eye on the plunder; and never suspecting that the dead woman’s pillow covered a will, he no doubt annexed, for his son, the seven hundred and fifty thousand francs as a precaution.  That is why he can promise to recover the money.

“M. de Rubempre owes it to himself and to justice to account for his father’s position in the world——­

“And he offers me the protection of his Order—­His Order!—­if I do not examine Lucien——­”

As has been seen, a magistrate conducts an examination exactly as he thinks proper.  He is at liberty to display his acumen or be absolutely blunt.  An examination may be everything or nothing.  Therein lies the favor.

Camusot rang.  The usher had returned.  He was sent to fetch Monsieur Lucien de Rubempre with an injunction to prohibit his speaking to anybody on his way up.  It was by this time two in the afternoon.

“There is some secret,” said the judge to himself, “and that secret must be very important.  My amphibious friend—­since he is neither priest, nor secular, nor convict, nor Spaniard, though he wants to hinder his protege from letting out something dreadful—­argues thus:  ’The poet is weak and effeminate; he is not like me, a Hercules in diplomacy, and you will easily wring our secret from him.’—­Well, we will get everything out of this innocent.”