him, as he poured out a glass of wine. "Courage! you improvise better
than Berryer! If you exert yourself, the public prosecutor will be
beaten in no time."

Marillac thanked his neighbor with a smile and a nod of the head, which
signified: "Trust me." He then emptied his glass with the recklessness
that had characterized his drinking for some time, but, strangely enough,
the libation, instead of putting the finishing stroke to his drunkenness,
gave his mind, for the time being, a sort of lucidity.

"The accusation," he continued, with the coolness of an old lawyer,
"rests upon two grounds: first, the presence without cause of the accused
upon the spot where the crime was committed; second, the nature of the
weapon used.--Two simple but peremptory replies will make the scaffold
which has been erected upon this double supposition fall to the ground.
First, Lambernier had a rendezvous at this place, and at the exact hour
when this crime with which he is accused took place; this will be proved
by a witness, and will be established by evidence in a most indisputable
manner. His presence will thus be explained without its being
interpreted in any way against him. Second, the public prosecutor has
admitted that the carrying of a weapon which Lambernier may have been in
the habit of using in his regular trade could not be used as an argument
against him, and for that same reason could not be used as an argument in
favor of premeditation; now, this is precisely the case in question.
This weapon was neither a sword, bayonet, nor stiletto, nothing that the
fertile imagination of the public prosecutor could imagine; it was a
simple tool used by the accused in his profession, the presence of which
in his pocket is as easily understood as that of a snuff-box in the
pocket of my neighbor, the notary, who takes twenty pinches of snuff a
minute. Gentlemen, this weapon was a pair of carpenter's compasses."