“A thorough-paced magistrate, I tell you, is an unhappy man.  They ought to live apart from all society, like the pontiffs of old.  The world should never see them but at fixed hours, leaving their cells, grave, and old, and venerable, passing sentence like the high priests of antiquity, who combined in their person the functions of judicial and sacerdotal authority.  We should be accessible only in our high seat.—­As it is, we are to be seen every day, amused or unhappy, like other men.  We are to be found in drawing-rooms and at home, as ordinary citizens, moved by our passions; and we seem, perhaps, more grotesque than terrible.”

This bitter cry, broken by pauses and interjections, and emphasized by gestures which gave it an eloquence impossible to reduce to writing, made Camusot’s blood run chill.

“And I, monsieur,” said he, “began yesterday my apprenticeship to the sufferings of our calling.—­I could have died of that young fellow’s death.  He misunderstood my wish to be lenient, and the poor wretch committed himself.”

“Ah, you ought never to have examined him!” cried Monsieur de Granville; “it is so easy to oblige by doing nothing.”

“And the law, monsieur?” replied Camusot.  “He had been in custody two days.”

“The mischief is done,” said the public prosecutor.  “I have done my best to remedy what is indeed irremediable.  My carriage and servants are following the poor weak poet to the grave.  Serizy has sent his too; nay, more, he accepts the duty imposed on him by the unfortunate boy, and will act as his executor.  By promising this to his wife he won from her a gleam of returning sanity.  And Count Octave is attending the funeral in person.”

“Well, then, Monsieur le Comte,” said Camusot, “let us complete our work.  We have a very dangerous man on our hands.  He is Jacques Collin —­and you know it as well as I do.  The ruffian will be recognized——­”

“Then we are lost!” cried Monsieur de Granville.

“He is at this moment shut up with your condemned murderer, who, on the hulks, was to him what Lucien has been in Paris—­a favorite protege.  Bibi-Lupin, disguised as a gendarme, is watching the interview.”

“What business has the superior police to interfere?” said the public prosecutor.  “He has no business to act without my orders!”

“All the Conciergerie must know that we have caught Jacques Collin.  —­Well, I have come on purpose to tell you that this daring felon has in his possession the most compromising letters of Lucien’s correspondence with Madame de Serizy, the Duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and Mademoiselle Clotilde de Grandlieu.”

“Are you sure of that?” asked Monsieur de Granville, his face full of pained surprise.