"Yours, etc., DELBECQ."


"One comes across people who are, on my honor, too stupid by half,"
cried Derville. "They don't deserve to be Christians! Be humane,
generous, philanthropical, and a lawyer, and you are bound to be
cheated! There is a piece of business that will cost me two
thousand-franc notes!"



Some time after receiving this letter, Derville went to the Palais de
Justice in search of a pleader to whom he wished to speak, and who was
employed in the Police Court. As chance would have it, Derville went
into Court Number 6 at the moment when the Presiding Magistrate was
sentencing one Hyacinthe to two months' imprisonment as a vagabond,
and subsequently to be taken to the Mendicity House of Detention, a
sentence which, by magistrates' law, is equivalent to perpetual
imprisonment. On hearing the name of Hyacinthe, Derville looked at the
deliquent, sitting between two /gendarmes/ on the bench for the
accused, and recognized in the condemned man his false Colonel
Chabert.

The old soldier was placid, motionless, almost absentminded. In spite
of his rags, in spite of the misery stamped on his countenance, it
gave evidence of noble pride. His eye had a stoical expression which
no magistrate ought to have misunderstood; but as soon as a man has
fallen into the hands of justice, he is no more than a moral entity, a
matter of law or of fact, just as to statists he has become a zero.