The old poacher obeyed.
"You say that you saw the body from your boat?"
"Yes, Monsieur Mayor."
"Where is your boat?"
"There, hauled up to that field."
"Well, lead us to it."
It was clear to all that this order had a great effect upon the man. He trembled and turned pale under his rough skin, tanned as it was by sun and storm. He was even seen to cast a menacing look toward his son.
"Let us go," said he at last.
They were returning to the house when the valet proposed to pass over the ditch. "That will be the quickest way," said he, "I will go for a ladder which we will put across."
He went off, and quickly reappeared with his improvised foot-bridge. But at the moment he was adjusting it, the mayor cried out to him:
"Stop!"
The imprints left by the Bertauds on both sides of the ditch had just caught his eye.
"What is this?" said he; "evidently someone has crossed here, and not long ago; for the traces of the steps are quite fresh."
After an examination of some minutes he ordered that the ladder should be placed farther off. When they had reached the boat, he said to Jean, "Is this the boat with which you went to take up your nets this morning?"
"Yes."
"Then," resumed M. Courtois, "what implements did you use? your cast net is perfectly dry; this boat-hook and these oars have not been wet for twenty-four hours."
The distress of the father and son became more and more evident.
"Do you persist in what you say, Bertaud?" said the mayor.
"Certainly."
"And you, Philippe?"
"Monsieur," stammered the young man, "we have told the truth."
"Really!" said M. Courtois, in an ironical tone. "Then you will explain to the proper authorities how it was that you could see anything from a boat which you had not entered. It will be proved to you, also, that the body is in a position where it is impossible to see it from the middle of the river. Then you will still have to tell what these foot-prints on the grass are, which go from your boat to the place where the ditch has been crossed several times and by several persons."
The two Bertauds hung their heads.
"Brigadier," ordered the mayor, "arrest these two men in the name of the law, and prevent all communication between them."
Philippe seemed to be ill. As for old Jean, he contented himself with shrugging his shoulders and saying to his son:
"Well, you would have it so, wouldn't you?"
While the brigadier led the two poachers away, and shut them up separately, and under the guard of his men, the justice and the mayor returned to the park. "With all this," muttered M. Courtois, "no traces of the count."
They proceeded to take up the body of the countess. The mayor sent for two planks, which, with a thousand precautions, they placed on the ground, being able thus to move the countess without effacing the imprints necessary for the legal examination. Alas! it was indeed she who had been the beautiful, the charming Countess de Tremorel! Here were her smiling face, her lovely, speaking eyes, her fine, sensitive mouth.
There remained nothing of her former self. The face was unrecognizable, so soiled and wounded was it. Her clothes were in tatters. Surely a furious frenzy had moved the monsters who had slain the poor lady! She had received more than twenty knife-wounds, and must have been struck with a stick, or rather with a hammer; she had been dragged by her feet and by her hair!
In her left hand she grasped a strip of common cloth, torn, doubtless, from the clothes of one of the assassins. The mayor, in viewing the spectacle, felt his legs fail him, and supported himself on the arm of the impassible Plantat.
"Let us carry her to the house," said the justice, "and then we will search for the count."
The valet and brigadier (who had now returned) called on the domestics for assistance. The women rushed into the garden. There was then a terrible concert of cries, lamentations, and imprecations.
"The wretches! So noble a mistress! So good a lady!"
M. and Mme. de Tremorel, one could see, were adored by their people.
The countess had just been laid upon the billiard-table, on the ground-floor, when the judge of instruction and a physician were announced.
"At last!" sighed the worthy mayor; and in a lower tone he added, "the finest medals have their reverse."
For the first time in his life, he seriously cursed his ambition, and regretted being the most important personage in Orcival.
III
The judge of instruction of the tribunal at Corbeil, was M. Antoine Domini, a remarkable man, since called to higher functions. He was forty years of age, of a prepossessing person, and endowed with a very expressive, but too grave physiognomy. In him seemed typified the somewhat stiff solemnity of the magistracy. Penetrated with the dignity of his office, he sacrificed his life to it, rejecting the most simple distractions, and the most innocent pleasures.
He lived alone, seldom showing himself abroad; rarely received his friends, not wishing, as he said, that the weaknesses of the man should derogate from the sacred character of the judge. This latter reason had deterred him from marrying, though he felt the need of a domestic sphere.
Always and everywhere he was the magistrate—that is, the representative, even to fanaticism, of what he thought the most august institution on the earth. Naturally gay, he would double-lock himself in when he wished to laugh. He was witty; but if a bright sally escaped him, you may be sure he repented of it. Body and soul he gave to his vocation; and no one could bring more conscientiousness to the discharge of what he thought to be his duty. He was also inflexible. It was monstrous, in his eyes, to discuss an article of the code. The law spoke; it was enough; he shut his eyes, covered his ears, and obeyed.
From the day when a legal investigation commenced, he did not sleep, and he employed every means to discover the truth. Yet he was not regarded as a good judge of instruction; to contend by tricks with a prisoner was repugnant to him; to lay a snare for a rogue he thought debasing; in short, he was obstinate—obstinate to foolishness, sometimes to absurdity; even to denying the existence of the sun at mid-day.
The mayor and Papa Plantat hastened to meet M. Domini. He bowed to them gravely, as if he had not known them, and presenting to them a man of some sixty years who accompanied him:
"Messieurs," said he, "this is Doctor Gendron."
Papa Plantat shook hands with the doctor; the mayor smiled graciously at him, for Dr. Gendron was well-known in those parts; he was even celebrated, despite the nearness of Paris. Loving his art and exercising it with a passionate energy, he yet owed his renown less to his science than his manners. People said: "He is an original;" they admired his affectation of independence, of scepticism, and rudeness. He made his visits from five to nine in the morning—all the worse for those for whom these hours were inconvenient. After nine o'clock the doctor was not to be had. The doctor was working for himself, the doctor was in his laboratory, the doctor was inspecting his cellar. It was rumored that he sought for secrets of practical chemistry, to augment still more his twenty thousand livres of income. And he did not deny it; for in truth he was engaged on poisons, and was perfecting an invention by which could be discovered traces of all the alkaloids which up to that time had escaped analysis. If his friends reproached him, even jokingly, on sending away sick people in the afternoon, he grew red with