"Well, at least Cocoleu is willing to repeat his evidence?"

"No."

"Why, then you have virtually no witness!"

Yes, M. Galpin understood it but too well, and hence his anxiety. The
more he studied _his_ accused, the more he found him in an enigmatic and
threatening position, which was ominous of evil.

"Can he have an _alibi_?" he thought. "Or does he hold in reserve one of
those unforeseen revelations, which at the last moment destroy the whole
edifice of the prosecution, and cover the prosecuting attorney with
ridicule?"

Whenever these thoughts occurred to him, they made big drops of
perspiration run down his temples; and then he treated his poor clerk
Mechinet like a slave. And that was not all. Although he lived more
retired than ever, since this case had begun, many a report reached him
from the Chandore family.

To be sure, he was a thousand miles from imagining that they had
actually opened communications with the prisoner, and, what is more,
that this intercourse was carried on by Mechinet, his own clerk. He
would have laughed if one had come and told him that Dionysia had spent
a night in prison, and paid Jacques a visit. But he heard continually
of the hopes and the plans of the friends and relations of his prisoner;
and he remembered, not without secret fear and trembling that they were
rich and powerful, supported by relations in high places, beloved and
esteemed by everybody. He knew that Dionysia was surrounded by devoted