The very next day Comte Ferraud’s man of business, lately
appointed President of the County Court in a town of some
importance, wrote this distressing note to Derville:
“Monsieur,—
“Madame la Comtesse Ferraud desires me to inform
you that your client took complete advantage of your con-
fidence, and that the individual calling himself Comte
Chabert has acknowledged that he came forward under
false pretences.
“Yours, etc.,
“Delbecq.”
“One comes across people who are, on my honor, too stu-
pid by half,” cried Derville. “They don’t deserve to be Chris-
tians! Be humane, generous, philanthropical, and a lawyer,
and you are bound to be cheated! There is a piece of business
that will cost me two thousand-franc notes!”
Some time after receiving this letter, Derville went to the
Palais de Justice in search of a pleader to whom he wished to
speak, and who was employed in the Police Court. As chance
would have it, Derville went into Court Number 6 at the
moment when the Presiding Magistrate was sentencing one
Hyacinthe to two months’ imprisonment as a vagabond, and
subsequently to be taken to the Mendicity House of Deten-
tion, a sentence which, by magistrates’ law, is equivalent to
perpetual imprisonment. On hearing the name of Hyacinthe,
Derville looked at the deliquent, sitting between two gen-
darmes on the bench for the accused, and recognized in the
condemned man his false Colonel Chabert.
The old soldier was placid, motionless, almost absent-
minded. In spite of his rags, in spite of the misery stamped
on his countenance, it gave evidence of noble pride. His eye
had a stoical expression which no magistrate ought to have
misunderstood; but as soon as a man has fallen into the hands
of justice, he is no more than a moral entity, a matter of law
or of fact, just as to statists he has become a zero.
When the veteran was taken back to the lock-up, to be
removed later with the batch of vagabonds at...