Part 11 (1/2)

”But, Monsieur Fandor, if you wish to interview one of the puisne judges, it would be ten times quicker for you to go and see him at his own home: here, at the Palais, it's almost certain he will refuse to answer you....”

”Don't bother about that, Madame Marguerite! Just tell me where these worthy guardians of order, defenders of right and justice, divest themselves of their red robes?”

Madame Marguerite was too much accustomed to our young journalist's ridiculous questions and absurd requests and remarks to argue with him any longer.

”The robing-room of these gentlemen,” said she, ”is in one of the outer offices of the court, near the Council Chamber.”

”There is an a.s.sistant in that room, isn't there?”

”Yes, Monsieur Fandor.”

”Ah! That is just what I wanted to know! Many thanks, madame,” and Fandor, grinning with satisfaction, made off in the direction of the Court of a.s.sizes. He ran up the steps leading to the Council Chamber, and spying the messenger asked:

”Can President Guechand see me, do you think?”

”Monsieur le President has gone.”

Fandor seemed to be reflecting. He gazed searchingly round the room. As a matter of fact, he was verifying the correctness of Madame Marguerite's information. All round the room Fandor saw the little presses where the men of law kept their red robes. Yes, it was the robing and unrobing room of the puisne judges, the magistrates, right enough!

”So the President has gone? Ah, well ...” Fandor hesitated: he must think of some other name. He noticed the visiting cards nailed to each press, indicating the owner. He read one of the names and repeated it:

”Well, then, could Justice Hubert see me--could he possibly? Will you ask him to let me see him for five minutes?”

”What name shall I say?”

”My name will not tell him anything. Please say it is with reference to the--er--Peyru case--and I come from Maitre Tissot.”

”I will go and see,” said the messenger, moving off.

Whilst he was in sight Fandor walked up and down in the regulation way, murmuring:

”Maitre Tissot!... The Peyru case!... Go ahead, my good fellow! You will have a nice kind of reception down below there--with those made-up names.”

Some minutes later, the messenger returned to his post, prepared to inform the importunate young man that he could not possibly be received by Justice Hubert. He stopped short on the threshold: not a soul was to be seen!

”Wherever has that young man got to? Taken himself off, most likely!...

I expect he was one of those lawyer's clerks--confound them! A nice fool I should have looked if his Honour, Justice Hubert, had said he would receive him!”

With this reflection the messenger went back to his newspaper, not without having ascertained that it was four o'clock, and therefore he had still an hour to wait before he could have his coffee and cigar at the ”Men of the Robe.”

Through the great windows of the Court of a.s.sizes, carefully closed as they were, not a ray of moonlight filtered into the court room. And this obscurity lent an added terror to a silence as profound as the grave, a silence which, with the falling shades of night, a.s.sumed possession of the vast hall, where so many criminals had listened to the fatal sentence--the sentence of death.

When the Court had risen, the a.s.sistants had, as usual, proceeded to put the place in order; then the police sergeant had made his rounds, and had gone away, double locking the doors behind him. After this the chamber had gradually sunk into complete repose: a repose which would be broken the following morning when the bustling routine of the legal day commenced once more.

Little by little, too, the many and varied noises, which had echoed and re-echoed the whole day through in the galleries of the Palais de Justice, had died down, and sunk into silence.

The custodians had made their last round; the barristers had quitted the robing-room; the poor wretches who had slunk in to warm themselves at the heating apparatus in the halls had shuffled back to the cold street, and the whistling blasts of the north wind. The immense pile was entirely deserted.

A clock began to strike.