"You see, gentlemen, Count Claudieuse is in a bad plight. He has been
fired at with a gun loaded with small shot; and wounds made in that way
are very puzzling. I trust no vital part has been injured; but I cannot
answer for any thing. I have often in my practice seen very small
injuries, wounds caused by a small-sized shot, which, nevertheless,
proved fatal, and showed their true character only twelve or fifteen
hours after the accident had happened."

He would have gone on in this way, if the magistrate had not suddenly
interrupted him, saying,--

"Doctor, you know I am here because a crime has been committed. The
criminal has to be found out, and to be punished: hence I request your
assistance, from this moment, in the name of the Law."



III.

By this single phrase M. Galpin made himself master of the situation,
and reduced the doctor to an inferior position, in which, it is true, he
had the mayor and the commonwealth attorney to bear him company. There
was nothing now to be thought of, but the crime that had been committed,
and the judge who was to punish the author. But he tried in vain to
assume all the rigidity of his official air and that contempt for human
feelings which has made justice so hateful to thousands. His whole being
was impregnated with intense satisfaction, up to his beard, cut and
trimmed like the box-hedges of an old-fashioned garden.