Within an Inch of His Life by Emile Gaboriau (good summer reads .TXT) 📖

“You are needlessly alarmed,” began the advocate.

But Grandpapa Chandore shook his head, and said,—

“No, no. I fear my child has been hurt in her heart’s heart. Did you not see how white she looked, and how faint her voice was? Great God! wilt thou leave me all alone here upon earth? O God! for which of my sins dost thou punish me in my children? For mercy’s sake, call me home before she also leaves me, who is the joy of my life. And I can do nothing to turn aside this fatality—stupid inane old man that I am! And this Jacques de Boiscoran—if he were guilty, after all? Ah the wretch! I would hang him with my own hands!”

Deeply moved, M. Folgat had watched the old gentleman’s grief. Now he said,—

“Do not blame M. de Boiscoran, sir, now that every thing is against him! Of all of us, he suffers, after all, most; for he is innocent.”

“Do you still think so?”

“More than ever. Little as he has said, he has told Miss Dionysia enough to confirm me in my conjecture, and to prove to me that I have guessed right.”

“When?”

“The day we went to Boiscoran.”

The baron tried to remember.

“I do not recollect,” he said.

“Don’t you remember,” said the lawyer, “that you left us, so as to permit Anthony to answer my questions more freely?”

“To be sure!” cried M. de Chandore, “to be sure! And then you thought”—

“I thought I had guessed right, yes, sir; but I am not going to do any thing now. M. de Boiscoran tells us that the facts are improbable. I should, therefore, in all probability, soon be astray; but, since we are now bound to be passive till the investigation is completed, I shall employ the time in examining the country people, who will, probably, tell me more than Anthony did. You have, no doubt, among your friends, some who must be well informed,—M. Seneschal, Dr. Seignebos.”

The latter did not keep M. Folgat waiting long; for his name had hardly been mentioned, when he himself repeated it in the passage, telling a servant,—

“Say it is I, Dr. Seignebos, Dr. Seignebos.”

He fell like a bombshell into the room. It was four days now since he had last presented himself there; for he had not come himself for his report and the shot he had left in M. Folgat’s hands. He had sent for them, excusing himself on the score of his many engagements. The fact was, however, that he had spent nearly the whole of these four days at the hospital, in company with one of his brother-practitioners, who had been sent for by the court to proceed, “jointly with Dr. Seignebos,” to an examination of Cocoleu’s mental condition.

“And this is what brings me here,” he cried, still in the door; “for this opinion, if it is not put into proper order, will deprive M. de Boiscoran of his best and surest chance of escape.”

After what Dionysia had told them, neither M. de Chandore nor M. Folgat attached much importance to the state of Cocoleu’s mind: still this word “escape” attracted their attention. There is nothing unimportant in a criminal trial.

“Is there any thing new?” asked the advocate.

The doctor first went to close the doors carefully, and then, putting his cane and broad-brimmed hat upon the table, he said,—

“No, there is nothing new. They still insist, as before, upon ruining M. de Boiscoran; and, in order to do that, they shrink from nothing.”

“They! Who are they?” asked M. de Chandore.

The doctor shrugged his shoulders contemptuously.

“Are you really in doubt, sir?” he replied. “And yet the facts speak clearly enough. In this department, there is a certain number of physicians who are not very keenly alive to the honor of their profession, and who are, to tell the truth, consummate apes.”

Grave as the situation was, M. Folgat could hardly suppress a smile, the doctor’s manner was so very extraordinary.

“But there is one of these apes,” he went on, “who, in length of ears and thickness of skin, surpasses all the others. Well, he is the very one whom the court has chosen and associated with me.”

Upon this subject it was desirable to put a check upon the doctor. M. de Chandore therefore interrupted him, saying,—

“In fine”—

“In fine, my learned brother is fully persuaded that his mission as a physician employed by a court of justice is to say ‘Amen’ to all the stories of the prosecution. ‘Cocoleu is an idiot,’ says M. Galpin peremptorily. ‘He is an idiot, or ought to be one,’ reechoes my learned brother. ‘He spoke on the occasion of the crime by an inspiration from on high,’ the magistrate goes on to say. ‘Evidently,’ adds the brother, ‘there was an inspiration from on high.’ For this is the conclusion at which my learned brother arrives in his report: ‘Cocoleu is an idiot who had been providentially inspired by a flash of reason.’ He does not say it in these words; but it amounts to the same thing.”

He had taken off his spectacles, and was wiping them industriously.

“But what do you think, doctor?” asked M. Folgat.

Dr. Seignebos solemnly put on again his spectacles, and replied coldly,—

“My opinion, which I have fully developed in my report, is, that Cocoleu is not idiotic at all.”

M. Chandore started: the proposition seemed to him monstrous. He knew Cocoleu very well; he had seen him wander through the streets of Sauveterre during the eighteen months which the poor creature had spent under the doctor’s treatment.

“What! Cocoleu not idiotic?” he repeated.

“No!” Dr. Seignebos declared peremptorily; “and you have only to look at him to be convinced. Has he a large flat face, disproportionate mouth, a yellow, tanned complexion, thick lips, defective teeth, and squinting eyes? Does his deformed head sway from side to side, being too heavy to be supported by his neck? Is his body deformed, and his spine crooked? Do you find that his stomach is big and pendent, that his hands drop upon his thighs, that his legs are awkward, and the joints unusually large? These are the symptoms of idiocy, gentleman, and you do not find them in Cocoleu. I, for my part, see in him a scamp, who has an iron constitution, who uses his hands very cleverly, climbs trees like a monkey, and leaps ditches ten feet wide. To be sure, I do not pretend that his intellect is normal; but I maintain that he is one of those imbeciles who have certain faculties very fully developed, while others, more essential, are missing.”

While M. Folgat listened with the most intense interest, M. de Chandore became impatient, and said,—