“Three,” he replied.

An argument hereupon ensued as to whether the three sacks included the one which Gothard was carrying at the time of the arrest (which reduced the number of the other sacks to two) or whether there were three without the last.  The debate ended in favor of the first proposition, the jury considering that only two sacks had been used.  They appeared to have a foregone conviction on that point, but Bordin and Monsieur de Grandville judged it best to surfeit them with plaster, and weary them so thoroughly with the argument that they would no longer comprehend the question.  Monsieur de Grandville made it appear that experts ought to have been sent to examine the stone posts.

“The director of the jury,” he said, “has contented himself with merely visiting the place, less for the purpose of making a careful examination than to trap Michu in a lie; this, in our opinion, was a failure of duty, but the blunder is to our advantage.”

On this the Court appointed experts to examine the posts and see if one of them had been really mended and reset.  The public prosecutor, on his side, endeavored to make capital of the affair before the experts could testify.

“You seem to have chosen,” he said to Michu, who was now brought back into the courtroom, “an hour when the daylight was waning, from half-past five to half-past six o’clock, to mend this post and to cement it all alone.”

“Monsieur d’Hauteserre had blamed me for not doing it,” replied Michu.

“But,” said the prosecutor, “if you used that plaster on the post you must have had a trough and a trowel.  Now, if you went to the chateau to tell Monsieur d’Hauteserre that you had done the work, how do you explain the fact that Gothard was bringing you more plaster.  You must have passed your farm on your way to the chateau, and you would naturally have left your tools at home and stopped Gothard.”

This overwhelming argument produced a painful silence in the courtroom.

“Come,” said the prosecutor, “you had better admit at once that what you buried was not a stone post.”

“Do you think it was the senator?” said Michu, sarcastically.

Monsieur de Grandville hereupon demanded that the public prosecutor should explain his meaning.  Michu was accused of abduction and the concealment of a person, but not of murder.  Such an insinuation was a serious matter.  The code of Brumaire, year IV., forbade the public prosecutor from presenting any fresh count at the trial; he must keep within the indictment or the proceedings would be annulled.

The public prosecutor replied that Michu, the person chiefly concerned in the abduction and who, in the interests of his masters, had taken the responsibility on his own shoulders, might have thought it necessary to plaster up the entrance of the hiding-place, still undiscovered, where the senator was now immured.

Pressed with questions, hampered by the presence of Gothard, and brought into contradiction with himself, Michu struck his fist upon the edge of the dock with a resounding blow and said:  “I have had nothing whatever to do with the abduction of the senator.  I hope and believe his enemies have merely imprisoned him; when he reappears you’ll find out that the plaster was put to no such use.”