Michu admitted his threats against Marion; but denied that he had made them violently.  As for the ambush in which he was supposed to have watched for his enemy, he said he was merely making his rounds in his park; the senator and Monsieur Grevin might perhaps have been alarmed at the sight of his gun and have thought his intentions hostile when they were really inoffensive.  He called attention to the fact that in the dusk a man who was not in the habit of hunting might easily fancy a gun was pointed at him, whereas, in point of fact, it was held in his hand at half-cock.  To explain the condition of his clothes when arrested, he said he had slipped and fallen in the breach on his way home.  “I could scarcely see my way,” he said, “and the loose stones slipped from under me as I climbed the bank.”  As for the plaster which Gothard was bringing him, he replied as he had done in all previous examinations, that he wanted it to secure one of the stone posts of the covered way.

The public prosecutor and the president asked him to explain how he could have been at the top of the covered way engaged in mending a stone post and at the same time in the breach of the moat leading to the chateau; more especially as the justice of peace, the gendarmes and the forester all declared they had heard him approach them from the lower road.  To this Michu replied that Monsieur d’Hauteserre had blamed him for not having mended the post,—­which he was anxious to have finished because there were difficulties about that road with the township,—­and he had therefore gone up to the chateau to report that the work was done.

Monsieur d’Hauteserre had, in fact, put up a fence above the covered way to prevent the township from taking possession of it.  Michu seeing the important part which the state of his clothes was likely to play, invented this subterfuge.  If, in law, truth is often like falsehood, falsehood on the other hand has a very great resemblance to truth.  The defence and the prosecution both attached much importance to this testimony, which became one of the leading points of the trial on account of the vigor of the defence and the suspicions of the prosecution.

Gothard, instructed no doubt by Monsieur de Grandville, for up to that time he had only wept when they questioned him, admitted that Michu had told him to carry the plaster.

“Why did neither you nor Gothard take the justice of peace and the forester to the stone post and show them your work?” said the public prosecutor, addressing Michu.

“Because,” replied the man, “I didn’t believe there was any serious accusation against us.”

All the prisoners except Gothard were now removed from the courtroom.  When Gothard was left alone the president adjured him to speak the truth for his own sake, pointing out that his pretended idiocy had come to an end; none of the jurors believed him imbecile; if he refused to answer the court he ran the risk of serious penalty; whereas by telling the truth at once he would probably be released.  Gothard wept, hesitated, and finally ended by saying that Michu had told him to carry several sacks of plaster; but that each time he had met him near the farm.  He was asked how many sacks he had carried.