ABBÉ. What do you know about that?

ADOLPHE. Not very much, but I keep an eye on what happens--

ABBÉ. And you understand it also?

ADOLPHE. Not yet perhaps.

ABBÉ. Let us look more closely at the matter--Oh, here comes the
Commissaire.

COMMISSAIRE. [Enters] Gentlemen--Madame Catherine--I have to
trouble you for a moment with a few questions concerning Monsieur
Maurice. As you have probably heard, he has become the object of a
hideous rumour, which, by the by, I don't believe in.

MME. CATHERINE. None of us believes in it either.

COMMISSAIRE. That strengthens my own opinion, but for his own sake
I must give him a chance to defend himself.

ABBÉ. That's right, and I guess he will find justice, although it
may come hard.

COMMISSAIRE. Appearances are very much against him, but I have
seen guiltless people reach the scaffold before their innocence
was discovered. Let me tell you what there is against him. The
little girl, Marion, being left alone by her mother, was secretly
visited by the father, who seems to have made sure of the time
when the child was to be found alone. Fifteen minutes after his