“I ought to kiss your footprints!” exclaimed Camusot, interrupting his wife, putting his arm round her, and pressing her to his heart.  “Amelie, you have saved me!”

“I brought you in tow from Alencon to Mantes, and from Mantes to the Metropolitan Court,” replied Amelie.  “Well, well, be quite easy!—­I intend to be called Madame la Presidente within five years’ time.  But, my dear, pray always think over everything a long time before you come to any determination.  A judge’s business is not that of a fireman; your papers are never in a blaze, you have plenty of time to think; so in your place blunders are inexcusable.”

“The whole strength of my position lies in identifying the sham Spanish priest with Jacques Collin,” the judge said, after a long pause.  “When once that identity is established, even if the Bench should take the credit of the whole affair, that will still be an ascertained fact which no magistrate, judge, or councillor can get rid of.  I shall do like the boys who tie a tin kettle to a cat’s tail; the inquiry, whoever carries it on, will make Jacques Collin’s tin kettle clank.”

“Bravo!” said Amelie.

“And the public prosecutor would rather come to an understanding with me than with any one else, since I am the only man who can remove the Damocles’ sword that hangs over the heart of the Faubourg Saint-Germain.

“Only you have no idea how hard it will be to achieve that magnificent result.  Just now, when I was with Monsieur de Granville in his private office, we agreed, he and I, to take Jacques Collin at his own valuation—­a canon of the Chapter of Toledo, Carlos Herrera.  We consented to recognize his position as a diplomatic envoy, and allow him to be claimed by the Spanish Embassy.  It was in consequence of this plan that I made out the papers by which Lucien de Rubempre was released, and revised the minutes of the examinations, washing the prisoners as white as snow.

“To-morrow, Rastignac, Bianchon, and some others are to be confronted with the self-styled Canon of Toledo; they will not recognize him as Jacques Collin who was arrested in their presence ten years ago in a cheap boarding-house, where they knew him under the name of Vautrin.”

There was a short silence, while Madame Camusot sat thinking.

“Are you sure your man is Jacques Collin?” she asked.

“Positive,” said the lawyer, “and so is the public prosecutor.”

“Well, then, try to make some exposure at the Palais de Justice without showing your claws too much under your furred cat’s paws.  If your man is still in the secret cells, go straight to the Governor of the Conciergerie and contrive to have the convict publicly identified.  Instead of behaving like a child, act like the ministers of police under despotic governments, who invent conspiracies against the monarch to have the credit of discovering them and making themselves indispensable.  Put three families in danger to have the glory of rescuing them.”