being questioned by journalists. When she appeared, Fandor told her he only wanted a little bit of information from her.
"Oh, yes, I know all about that! There is someone you wish to see, and you want me to manage it for you!"
"No! Not a bit of it! What I want to know is, where these gentlemen of the Court of Justice robe and unrobe? I mean the Justices of the Assize Courts!"
This seemed to astonish Madame Marguerite considerably:
"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 assistant 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 Assizes. He ran up the steps leading to the Council Chamber, and spying the messenger asked:
"Can President Guéchand 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 Maître 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:
"Maître 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 Assizes, 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, assumed 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 assistants 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.
Then, hardly had the last stroke of eleven sounded, awakening the echoes of the empty galleries, than in the Court of Assizes itself, under the monumental desk, before which the justices sat in state by day, a noise made itself heard, long, strident, nerve-racking—the noise of an alarum clock!
Just as the alarum ceased its raucous call, a loud yawn resounded through the empty spaces of the chamber. The sleeper, who had selected this spot that he might indulge, all undisturbed, in a revivifying sleep, evidently took no pains to smother the sound of his voice, for, after yawning enough to dislocate his jaws, he uttered a loud: "Ah!" He accompanied his yawns with exclamations:
"It's a fact, the Republic doesn't do things up to the scratch! The rugs here are of poor quality! … I'm aching all over! … The floor is strewn with peach kernels—surely? … At any rate, it's a quiet hotel, and one is not disturbed—a truly delectable refuge to have a jolly good snore in!"
The sleeper sat up:
"What's the time exactly? Let us have a light on it!" A match was struck, and a tiny flare of light shone from under the desk of the presiding judge:
"Ten past eleven! I've still five minutes to be lazy in—and I shall need all of it, for I've a rough night before me! I can rest awhile, and think things over!"
The speaker calmly lay down again, trying to find a comfortable position on what he christened mentally: "The administrative peach kernels":
"Let me see, now!" he went on aloud. "At five in the afternoon it was known that Jacques Dollon had committed suicide; was probably innocent, and that his corpse had disappeared. Yesterday, at half-past five, La Capitale announced that he had a very pretty sister. … To-night at ten past eleven behold me, shut up quite alone in the Palais de Justice, free to proceed to the little investigation I think of making. … Jérôme Fandor, my dear friend, I congratulate you! You have not managed badly! …
"Yes," went on our journalist, "what a joke it is! Here have I got myself shut up in the Palais without the slightest difficulty! It is true, that if the assistant had been obliged to open, and verify, the contents of all the robing-rooms of all the judges, he would never have finished. As for me, in my cupboard, I followed all the good fellow's movements, and he never suspected my presence. If I am to be congratulated, he cannot be blamed for it! There I was, there I remained, and now I must be off!"
Fandor drew a small wax taper from his pocket and lighted it with a match.
"What's
